Tatyana Franck – författare

Switzerland's image has been significantly shaped by photographs dedicated to tourism. Through spectacular mountain panoramas, snapshots of rural idylls, or portraits of local people, the country could be successfully marketed, and these photographs also made an important contribution to- ward national identity. Another consequence, however, was that the respective pictorial repertoire became inflated and stereotyped. For this publication and for an exhibition of the same name opening in 2017, five internationally renowned photographers were invited to scrutinize Switzerland in their capacity as independent, subjective, and sensitive observers-unrestricted by any advertising commission. What Alinka Echeverri a (Mexiko/UK), Shane Lavalette (USA), Eva Leitolf (Germany), Simon Roberts (UK), and Zhang Xiao (China) discovered on their travels around the country or along its borders is both inspiring and revealing. Their exciting, poetic, or mysterious-enigmatic im- ages invite viewers to see the familiar with the eyes of an outsider.6 booklets in a slipcase

The Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, one of the most renowned photography museums in Europe, has awarded the Prix Elysée biannually since 2014. Young photo artists are invited to submit a photo book project with the prize being the realisation of the winning submission, which constitutesa major step in an artist-photographer’s career.Thisbook documents the Prix Elysée’s fourth edition. It features the work submitted by the eight nominees Alexa Brunet, Arguine Escandón & Yann Gross, Magali Koenig, Thomas Mailaender, Moises Saman, Assaf Shoshan, Alys Tomlinson, and Kurt Tong. Sketches, first drafts, and photographic studies illustrate the progress of their projects, from initial concept to image selection and design. Conversations with the artists published alongside reflect on their close collaboration with the museum and expand on the visual portfolios. The individual creative process thus becomes visible, and at the same time, a cross-section of contemporary art photography production emerges. Text in English and French.

Over the course of four decades, Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla have put together a collection of photographs that is widely recognised as among the world's most important private collections. Spanning the entire history of the medium, it lacks hardly any of the names that forged this history. It comprises some of the most famous masterpieces by artists such as Eugène Atget, Robert Adams, Walker Evans, and Robert Mapplethorpe as well as works by contemporary photographers such as Cindy Sherman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Thomas Struth.The Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne is one of the world's leading museums entirely dedicated to photography. A highlight in the museum's 2018 exhibition program is the show The Beauty of the Lines, featuring some 120 works from the Gilman Gonzalez-Falla collection. The coinciding book presents the selected images in visual confrontations rather than just chronologically, offering a key to their physical quality and inviting the reader to question his or her own individual experience of sensitive relationship to the photographic image. Published alongside the images are an essay exploring the range and significance of the collection and a conversation with Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla.