A few words about myself...


Ever since I was a child, I have felt irresistibly attracted by the captivating beauty of nature, and by wildlife, so fascinating in its diversity. I grew up in an isolated place, a sort of island clung to the shores of Lake Geneva, this lake set itself like a jewel between the Alps and the Jura. On my island, lulled by our mother's readings of books such as the stories of naturalist Gerald Durrell, and later by adventure novels taking place in the confines of the world that my father regularly brought back for me, I was watching the comings and goings of the water birds in their migration, and I imagined a fabulous world beyond the setting of mountains which surrounded me. I was hoping that someday, I too would head off towards other sublime horizons. But this place where I grew up resembled perhaps too much a patch of forgotten paradise on earth to let me get away with it unscathed... Communicating wasn't really my strength. But photography has served me as a crutch, becoming in turn my confidante in times of solitude, or a wonderful excuse to reach out to others.
Photography is first and foremost a fantastic tool to express ones sensitivity and to share feelings, discoveries and concerns, related to a world of fascinating beauty. A world however fragile and of which man's thoughtless activity can erase whole pages, pages that will not be rewritten. This world which we inherited deserves to be preserved, let alone for our children, and it also deserves to be celebrated with love and passion.

Once out of school, I returned the Retina Reflex I had borrowed from my mum and dedicated my first paycheques to the purchase of the latest trend in reflex cameras: a Nikkormat EL equipped with a 400mm Novoflex, soon followed by a second hand 16mm Beaulieu movie camera. I was climbing slopes in Valais, heavily loaded, on the footsteps of the ibex and the chamois - I had at the time the books of René-Pierre Bille, a local pioneer of alpine wildlife photography, on my bedside table. Later, my interest moved from wildlife, very difficult to approach in the Swiss mountains, the animals being always on their guard due to relentless predation, to serene and more intimate visions that I strive to capture in their essence on large format film. Apart from some elementary courses, I learned mostly by practising, through the process of trials and errors. I have been largely inspired by other photographer's work – the large format photography of Shinzo Maeda which I discovered in the early nineties has probably been for me the most didactic – and perhaps in a lesser extent, by some painters also. Eager to discover intact places, I had hoped that photography would allow me to travel the vast world. So far, it’s been mainly a nearby world, a world constituted of small patches of beauty which have to be found like one finds shining gems or gold nuggets amongst the rubble of a river, nevertheless a captivating and almost interior world, that has unveiled before my lens.

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