Portraits - Femmes de Suisse

Portraits of Women in Switzerland

Artistic portraits full of calm intensity

On the essence of photographing people in the midst of the current flood of images

With an essay by Tatyana Franck, former director of the Musée d'Élysée in Lausanne.  She now heads the French Institute Alliance Française in New York.

Christian Scholz is a contemporary photographer of the old school. For thirty years he has been exploring the puzzling sign system of the human face in the project 501 – Portraitwerk Schweiz. Consistently analogue, in black-and-white and natural light. An undertaking of almost encyclopaedic dimensions.

The illustrated book Femmes de Suisse provides insight into the overall work, while at the same time being an independent project. It presents portraits of women, exclusively. With no focus on any idea of beauty, no folklore and no documentary intention. We see women from all parts of the country and from different social groups, known and unknown. Beside the portrait of a politician is one of a school pupil or else of an artist, farmer, secretary or art collector. In the course of intense encounters, Scholz takes portraits full of respect for his sitters.

About the artist:
Works by art photographer Christian Scholz (* 1951 in Stockholm) are to be found in collections at home and abroad. His unique and almost unrestrained interest is in time, and he regards the camera as a tool for giving time a face, for example, through the classical portrait. He lives and works in Zurich.

Eine unglaubliche Vielfalt – an Gesichtern und Gesichtsausdrücken. Emotionsgeladen, ernst, mal witzig, mal lachend, dann wieder nachdenklich, fragend, überzeugt – und überzeugend. (Urs Tillmanns, fotointern.ch, 4.12.2021)

Auffallend in diesem Buch ist auch die perfekte technische Qualität der Schwarzweissbilder. Dies betrifft einmal die analoge Aufnahmetechnik [...] und schliesslich der hervorragende Druck im Duoton-Verfahren mit einer fotorealistischen Bildqualität. (Urs Tillmanns, fotointern.ch, 4.12.2021)