WINTERTHUR.- In recent years, photographer Ester Vonplon (born 1980) has increasingly devoted her artistic practice to exploring lesser-known Swiss landscapes in her immediate surroundings. She is less interested here in the increasingly visible effects of human activity than in places that appear to remain intact and untouched. Aware of the fragility of these ecosystems, she wants to capture nature in photographs before it disappears (perhaps imminently) as a result of climatic change and human intervention. Vonplon sees her works as memento mori: they reveal both the strength and the transience of nature.

For her current bodies of work, the artist has been working at various sites in the Swiss canton of Grisons. These include Uaul Scatlè, a primeval spruce forest enclosed by steep rock formations, Val Curciusa, a high alpine valley, the Aclatobel forest nature reserve and the riparian landscape of Ogna da Pardiala. She documents these landscapes and found objects using photographic techniques she has developed over recent years. Careful movement through nature is combined with a spirit of experimentation and an exploration of photographic processes, opening up new perspectives on Swiss landscapes. The peculiar colour effects are typically caused by reactions between the chemicals involved in these processes. The choice of motifs and the variations on formats are deliberate decisions specifically tailored to the exhibition at Fotomuseum Winterthur.

Ester Vonplon (born 1980) lives and works in Castrisch in the Swiss canton of Grisons. She studied at Berlin’s Fotoschule am Schiffbauerdamm (now: Neue Schule für Fotografie) and completed her master’s degree in fine arts at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2013. She shows her work both in Switzerland and abroad and has been honoured with a number of awards, including the Manor Cultural Prize Grisons and the SAC Art Prize in 2017. Her artistic projects come out of the Surselva region and are often inspired by its landscape and nature.

Works

‘I don’t think there’s really any such thing as silence in nature. Nature is noisy. Be it on a glacier, in the forest or anywhere outdoors – nature is constantly in motion. Trees, animals, insects, babbling brooks, calving glaciers, wind, rain.’ Ester Vonplon

Wingbeat, 2020–2024

The Wingbeat body of work brings together impressions of plants, animals, fungi and stones. To capture their outlines, the artist employed the technique of the photogram. The Cellofix photographic paper used for this work had been stored for over a hundred years in lightproof cardboard boxes and forgotten about. Cellofix was used in European colonies because it was so easy to handle, but it was especially popular with First World War soldiers, who used this image carrier to send home signs of life from the front. By chance, the artist discovered that this famously robust paper, which she had acquired partly as a gift and partly through online marketplaces, was still light sensitive. She began using it during her walks through remote alpine landscapes.
Like the botanists of the 19th century, Vonplon collected impressions of objects she found on her excursions into an enigmatic environment. Unlike systematic scientific documentation, however, her works deliberately leave room for interpretation. Are we astonished observers of a diverse and fleeting nature that remains indifferent to our presence, or do we threaten its continued existence simply by being there?

I See Darkness, 2010–2025

An abandoned tunnel in the Safien Valley in Grisons served Vonplon as a darkroom. The decision to shift her working process to this remote tunnel within a natural reserve can be traced back to the Covid pandemic, which required new ways of working. Over days, weeks or even months, she laid large-format photographic paper on the ground and let the chemicals, sparse light and changing climatic conditions interact. Elements of chance and a loss of control over the photographic process play a central role in the resulting body of work I See Darkness, as they do in her other works. Subtle and often imperceptible environmental influences are recorded on the photographic paper through long exposure times and only become visible at all as a result. I See Darkness not only visualises the passage of time but can also be read as an idiosyncratic portrait of the spatial conditions. The tunnel becomes workplace, camera and subject all at once.

Il uaul, 2022–2024

The body of work Il uaul documents the protected riparian landscape of Ogna da Pardiala in the Surselva region. This dense, water-rich forest is one of the most important nationally protected areas and provides a vital habitat for numerous bird and amphibian species. Using a large-format analogue camera, the artist ventured into this pathless terrain, a challenging undertaking given the demands of handling the equipment.

The specific and at times unusual colouring of the images results from the analogue development process, which was carried out by the artist herself. The camera’s characteristic level of detail allows the riparian landscape to be precisely documented, making even the finest details visible. The forest, or igl uaul in the local Rhaeto-Romanic idiom, presents itself to us as a dense thicket that resists human passage.

Publication

The exhibition project is developed within the framework of Photographic Encounters, a biennial format through which Fotomuseum Winterthur, in collaboration with Christoph Merian Verlag, supports a photographer / artist in the realisation of an exhibition and a publication. The format facilitates the production and presentation of long-term photographic projects. Ester Vonplon was selected for the second edition.

The Photographic Encounters format was initiated by the Christoph Merian Foundation and is enabled by the Geissmann Scholarship for Photography.