End of page

Back to overview

Catherine Leutenegger

Awarded

Catherine Leutenegger

Photo research 'Hors-Champ'

Photography

Jury report

Photography about photography
Why show flash­guns on stands, why show rolling back­drops? Why take pic­tures of photo lab­o­ra­to­ries? With her photo col­lec­tion 'Hors-Champ', Leuteneg­ger an­swers these ques­tions in a con­vinc­ing and at­mos­pheric way. She is in­ter­ested in what usu­ally re­mains hid­den from the cam­era, what has to be hid­den from it in order for pho­tog­ra­phy to show us some­thing be­yond its own medium. 'Hors-Champ', a pho­to­graphic term and title of this photo se­ries, is re­fer­ring to what lies be­yond the focus of the cam­era. The pho­tog­ra­pher trained at the Ecole can­tonale d'art in Lau­sanne takes us with her on a ex­pe­di­tion and doc­u­ments photo stu­dios and lab­o­ra­to­ries be­tween Lau­sanne and Geneva. So they do still exist, these lov­ingly fur­nished photo stu­dios in which ob­jects are put in per­spec­tive with flash bat­ter­ies or tod­dlers are lov­ingly placed in front of the lens and por­trait as­sign­ments are car­ried out. More­over, one also gets an in­sight in rooms one would oth­er­wise never see: lab­o­ra­to­ries dom­i­nated by ma­chines which still pro­duce con­ven­tional film strips. Isn't this diploma pro­ject some­how nos­tal­gic? These pho­tos about places of pho­tog­ra­phy, thus in a way a kind of meta-pho­tog­ra­phy, refer to the con­structed char­ac­ter of this medium. Why cap­ture these places of pho­tog­ra­phy ex­actly today? 'Hors-Champ' can be de­scribed as a kind of ar­chae­ol­ogy of pho­to­graphic places. Often an in­ves­ti­ga­tion like this im­poses it­self when some­thing is about to dis­ap­pear. If not pho­tog­ra­phy it­self, then the as­pects of con­ven­tional, anal­o­gous image pro­duc­tion where light is cap­tured on film strips and af­ter­wards de­vel­oped in chem­i­cal baths. 'Hors-Champ' is a man­i­fold homage to the tra­di­tional tools of pho­tog­ra­phy.
Peter Stohler

Biography

Catherine Leutenegger
Born in
1983
Education 
Photographer

Web

www.cleutenegger.com

also in

2008

2017

Back to overview

Top of page