Patrimoine? L'éloquence des murs - Heritage? The Eloquence of Walls

For a year, on behalf of Patrimoine Grand Chasseral, the Western Swiss photographer searched for his own answers by casting a new perspective on a region unknown to him.

During his photographic excursions, day and night and in every kind of weather, François Vermot used his intuition and sensitivity to capture the architectural heritage of the region. The photographs reveal human life and daily routines behind walls and within rooms. Although the images do not establish architectural standards, they contribute to raising awareness of coherence or its opposite. A certain visual poetry can emerge in places rendered mundane by habit.

Belle Époque architecture, horological city planning, bourgeois houses, or workers' dwellings were some of the elements in a treasure hunt whose outcome, a series of 80 photographs, was published in the magazine Intervalles.

The Photobastei presents the 80 images, including 22 large-format prints, from January 15 to February 22 on the 3rd floor in the Cabinet. The images testify to the sometimes harmonious, sometimes glaring discrepancy between spatial planning and the landscape.

Through François Vermot's lens, the architectural heritage of the Bernese Jura comes to life, revealing a unique aesthetic and undeniable poetry that endows the walls with a distinctive and intimate expressive power.

François Vermot: An outsider's perspective

The self-taught filmmaker and photographer François Vermot was born in 1987 in Neuchâtel. While studying geography at the University of Fribourg, he made his first documentaries – portraits that showed a particular sensitivity to the living spaces of the filmed subjects. He developed an interest in photography and light, observing what happens when nothing happens. As a lover of architecture and urban planning, he devotes himself to environments that are not typically considered idyllic or that appear ordinary at first glance. The works thus created pay tribute to the banality of a location, the reality of a setting, or its flip side.

Opening

Thursday, January 15 from 6:00 p.m. in the presence of the artist

Opening hours

Wednesday & Sunday: 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Thursday to Saturday: 12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Admission: Prix Libre

Media Contacts:
François Vermot, photographer francois.vermot@gmail.com 079 812 06 11

Pierre-Yves Moeschler, historian and President of Patrimoine Grand Chasseral py.moeschler@bluewin.ch
078 818 03 38

Romano Zerbini, Association PhotoCreatives / Photobastei
romano.zerbini@photobastei.ch
T +41 44 240 22 00
M +41 79 220 09 84

Editor's note: Image rights belong to the respective publisher. Image rights: François Vermot