On the recommendation of an expert international jury, the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) has named the winners in the Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition !
The FOC organises the Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition every year. The award recognises excellence in book design and production and turns the spotlight on especially remarkable and contemporary books. The 20 outstanding books that were selected in 2022 from the 400 put forward for consideration were judged by the jury to demonstrate exceptional boldness and ambition. The jury was chaired by Sereina Rothenberger (graphic designer) and consisted of Gina Bucher (author and editor), Gregor Huber (graphic designer and editor), Silas Munro (graphic designer and author) and Kajsa Ståhl (graphic designer and editor).
Imagine inheriting part of the collective trauma of a country — only to find that that very country rejects you, not seeing you as one of their own.
by Jörg Colberg
Incorporating camera-less photogram techniques and embroidery as well as Photoshop and video art, these eye-catching highlights from the eighth annual photography fair find artists testing the boundaries of the medium.
by Arnel Hecimovic
In a tireless quest for identity, the Swiss-Japanese photographer David Favrod portrays his Japanese and Swiss roots in stories of photographic fictions.
Photographe d’origine japonaise, David Favrod signe Hikari, un projet singulier dédié à ses grands-parents, survivants de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Une série poignante, mêlant onomatopées, mémoire et histoire.
In his first book, Omoide poroporo, he speaks of his continued struggle with the paradoxes surrounding the question ‘Who am I?’. Favrod doesn't feel at home anywhere. In Omoide poroporo, he tries, step by step, to disentangle and to feed his memory, using his own memories of Japan, intermingled with his mother's stories and those of his grandparents.
BAOUMMM, ratatatata, viiuuu. The sounds of air raids on Kobe, Japan. In the last seven months of the Second World War, half of the city was destroyed. Incendiary and cluster bombs wreaked untold damage and claimed thousands of civilian lives. Food, water, and energy supplies dwindled and social life collapsed.
GUP has turned 10! We’ve worked with a lot of great photographers over the years since we got started on the magazine, and our anniversary is the perfect time to look back on how things have developed. In this series of interviews, we asked ten photographers that GUP has had the pleasure of working with to reflect with us on changes in their own careers, and in photography at large.
Shaped by ancestry, society, and history, material belongings and body embellishments have always served to communicate an individual’s sense of self; clothing and possessions are the fundamental elements through which self-image is expressed. As an outward expression of one’s inner most sensibilities and subjectivities, people perform their identities and position themselves in relation to the world around them. Influencing how the self is represented and seen, photography plays a significant role in the social and cultural construction of identity.
David Favrod, whose work was also featured in a primary exhibition at the 2014 Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival in Toronto, Canada, bring his work to Voies-Off this year. Inspired by history and informed by his Swiss-Japanese ancestry, his photographs are an attempt to recreate ephemeral memories from his own hazy recollections of childhood, and the vivid but detached memories of his grandparents as they witnessed World War II.
Le jeune photographe helvético-japonais expose à Paris son projet «Gaijin», quête identitaire d’un artiste façonné par deux cultures.
In his series Hikari, David Favrod visits an important time in Japanese history, and its impact on him and his family, through memories. The result is a poignant and compelling narrative positioned somewhere between the personal and the universal.
VOGUE PhotoVogue
Born in Japan and now living and working in Switzerland and Spain, artist David Favrod creates photographs, videos, and installations that combine elements of multiple cultures and genres—he often portrays his personal struggle with conflicting aspects of his bicultural identity.
The Image Flow’s Nathan Lomas writes about three contemporary photographers who have embraced the nature of photography as a medium but are not bound by its reality. Instead, they use the artifice of photography to reveal their own truths.
My grandparents witnessed the war; survivors who finally passed away and whose memories will soon be a part of history.
Une nuit seulement, le Suisso-Japonais David Favrod a évoqué la guerre avec ses grands-parents, les souvenirs enfouis et douloureux.
David «Takashi» Favrod is a Swiss-Japanese photographer, living and working in Switzerland. He graduated from École cantonale d’art de Lausanne with a master’s degree in art direction and a bachelor’s degree in photography.
”GAIJIN is a japanese word meaning «the foreigner» My name is David «Takashi» Favrod. I was born on the 2nd of July 1982 in Kobe, Japan, of a Japanese mother and a Swiss father. When I was 6 months old, my parents decided to come and live in Switzerland, more precisely in Vionnaz, a little village in lower Valais.
C'est dans ce domaine autobiographique qu'on trouve les travaux les moins désincarnés, les plus touchants. Le Suisse David Favrod, d'origine japonaise, a composé des mises en scène mystérieuses avec l'aide de ses grands-parents dans une usine désaffectée. Inspiré des récits de guerre de ses aïeuls, de la culture populaire japonaise et de la littérature, il a ainsi créé un pays de nulle part, son "Japon personnel" - un lieu d'autant plus imaginaire que la double nationalité lui a été refusée.
Les photos expressives de David Favrod sont les témoins de sa recherche d'identité; elles puisent dans ses souvenirs d'enfance, dans les récits de ses ancêtres, mais aussi dans la culture populaire et traditionnelle du Japon. Le photographe raconte, en quelques mises en scène ingénieuses, des histoires dans lesquelles il insère tous ces éléments. Avec poésie, quelquefois avec ironie, ses photos reflètent un monde empreint de clichés et de motifs explicitement japonais.
In his first publication, Omoide Poroporo, Favrod creates a playful and poetic correspondence between these two cultures. “Omoide Poroporo” refers to a Japanese proverb, which describes the slow dispersion of memory. Favrod constructs a juxtaposition of flashbacks and fantasies and therefore intensifies the initial multi-cultural confusion.
David «Takashi» Favrod, de Kobe au Valais