Solothurn, Switzerland
18 to 20 March 2024

Workshop Meeting the Mountains
Eric Bouvet and Daniel Schwartz
In cooperation with Kunstmuseum Solothurn

Forbidding, endowed with practical challenges but of great allure, the mountain environment has been a subject matter of photography since the first Alpine daguerreotypes were taken in August 1849 by Gustave Dardel and John Ruskin. In recent decades, the cryosphere and the high altitude zones of permafrost are a frontline of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. The observed loss of glaciers affects the identity of societies, and it comes with the loss of a climate archive which helps to predict future scenarios affecting millions of people. In the shrinking ice appear both forensic objects as well as individual human memories.

Eric Bouvet and Daniel Schwartz have spent years documenting the environmental changes in the Alpine environment in Switzerland, Europe and around the globe. Both start their journeys in libraries. Their approach is based on visual and other historic documents, and it includes terrestrial as well as aerial photography. Their work continues the tradition of interdisciplinary exchange between natural sciences and the arts. Bouvet’s book «Elevations» on the Mont Blanc and the Chamonix Valley was published by Editions Photosyntèses (Paris, 2023); its follow-up is a documentation of all Alpine passes between France and Italy for “La Fondation des Treilles”. Schwartz’ «While the Fires Burn. A Glacier Odyssey», ‘a glaciology in pictures’ was published by Thames & Hudson (London, 2017).

The two VII-photographers shed light on their analog practice. The workshop includes large and ultra large format direct paper photography (a cousin of Talbot’s calotype) of erratic boulder clusters in the forests above Solothurn. Occasion of the workshop is Schwartz’ exhibition «Zur Zeitlichkeit im Eis» («Ice and Temporality») in the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, established in 1902 and initialy named “Museum of Arts and Science”. The workshop includes a visit to and discussion of the exhibition.

Participants are encouraged to present a photographic project in any form and at any stage of completion for discussion; preferably in the form of physical objects such as prints, maquettes, documents and the like. Large format camera practice is not a precondition.