Nicolas Faure
Familie Fahham, Syrien, Meyrin
Familie Fahham, Syrien, Meyrin, 1993
From Meyrin: Citizens of the World
C-Print, 73 x 90 cm x 3.4 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, gift Nicolas Faure
1993-003-006
© Fotostiftung Schweiz
b. 1949 (Geneva, CH), lives and works in Meyrin, CH
Nicolas Faure might be described as a ‘new cartographer’ of the Swiss landscape. For the past ten or fifteen years he has been creating groups of works that relate to the Switzerland of today. For the most part these are landscape photographs, though more recently there have also been portraits: the two faces of a new, contemporary, high-tech Switzerland. Like the rest of the world, Switzerland is in the grip of change. After 150 years of stability, nothing seems to be as it once was. Though the country may still seem as efficient and precise as ever, neatly arranged into business, residential, transport, leisure and peripheral zones, the boundaries of these areas are blurring as different worlds and faces mix. Faure compares the popular culture of the Alps with the Alpine gardens in the cities. His pictures show the autobahn as a contemporary urban territory, the CERN laboratory as a vertiginous place of research and technology, the boulder as a remnant of nature in a manicured garden, and his group portraits represent the shifting population, mixing faces from many different nationalities with those of an internationally styled generation of home-grown kids. From one Switzerland to another: Nicolas Faure’s large-format colour photographs show the country’s transformation into a large, modern, streamlined, networked and sterile urban landscape.