© Nathalie Bissig

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The Wolves

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Wolves live close to people: in the woods, in the dark, each side careful not to cross the other’s path. In the Swiss canton of Uri, and in many places beyond it, legends and myths grew out of this closeness, out of a feeling that something incomprehensible waits in the dark, between leaves and branches. It is an ancient fear, and a curiosity just as old, that draws us closer to these images. The wolf stands for the omnipresent danger that people in Uri, as a mountain region, once faced and still face. It appears as a power that holds something beyond comprehension. A fire marks the edge of the human world, and its light dances on the faces of those who tell the stories.

 

Nathalie Bissig inverts her photographs, as if a night-vision camera had lifted the shadows or X-rays were passing through the surface. Grass, stone and slope are stripped of their physical skin and begin to glow. New details surface in the process: a face in the mountain, a sharp edge in the fur. The fields and hills seem endless, yet cut off from the everyday places we think we know. The longer one looks, the more mysteries gather behind the dark windows and in the seemingly abandoned meadows. We begin to see the way a nocturnal animal might.

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The exhibition runs through October 21

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in collaboration with near. swiss association for contemporary photography

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With the generous support of the Dätwyler Foundation, the Canton of Uri / Swisslos, and the Casimir Eigensatz Foundation

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