ECAL at Festival Images Vevey
07–29.09.2024
Vevey

From September 7 to 29, 2024, photography in all its forms takes over the streets of Vevey, invades the parks and strolls along the shores of the lake. For three weeks, the Festival Images Vevey transforms the small town on the Riviera and welcomes a wide audience. This year, four ECAL graduates are part of the program.

Positive Illusions 
Diploma project by Benjamin Freedman , Master Photography graduate
With this project , Benjamin Freedman is reconstructing his childhood memories using CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). The artist diverts this technology, mostly used in films and video games, which requires close involvement in the creation of every object, detail and lighting. Freedman meticulously reconstructs a family roadtrip between Montreal and Maine in the United States in 1999, reproducing his point of view at the age of nine. Created for the Boéland site near the Swiss Museum of Games, the installation explores how memory shapes, transforms and simulates reality. Positive Illusions plunges nostalgically into the joyous world of childhood, fragmented by memory and reassembled by technology.

Positive Illusions

Project

Positive Illusions is a photobook that depicts a series of childhood memories constructed using CGI. The resulting uncanny still lives, imagined from the perspective of a child, evoke a strange family presence in photo-realistic environments. Inspired by the nature of memory and simulation, I have based my scenes on what I could remember and used a phenomenological approach to fill in the blanks. Revisiting the past using CGI technology to re-stage events creates a unique flattening of the past and present – a process of pseudo visual archaeology. Some images in the series are repeated but with slight alterations, revealing the surrealist process of fabricating them and underscoring the phenomenon of distortion that is inherent to memory.

Cash Me Online
Diploma project by Amandine Kuhlmann , Master Photography graduate
Cash Me Online is a satirical project combining photography, performance and social media footage. Amandine Kuhlmann creates a hyper-feminine alter ego that she embodies online and during performances to achieve viral fame. She exaggerates her poses, imitates TikTok and Instagram trends and dramatizes her everyday life to make herself noticed. The artist reappropriates videos, drawing on the suggestions of her algorithm and the female stereotypes portrayed by social networks. These caricatured images reveal the ambiguities of virtual profiles, between the objectification of the body and the desire for individuality. Questioning the impact of social media and the monetisation of the self, the installation presents a reflection to a generation obsessed with their physical and digital appearance.

Cash Me Online

Project

Cash Me Online is a video project where I stage myself, combining performance with found footage. With the goal of achieving viral fame, I embrace delusion and despair in this exploration, which delves into the impact of cameras in the era of social media. Through a hyper-feminine digital alter ego based on my own algorithm, I perform in virtual and physical realms, fulfilling desires and aspirations. The project questions self-representation and the female gaze in the presence of empowered women on screen. The project examines tensions between toxic feminine tropes and how women reclaim them for empowerment. Found footage combined with a deepfake of my own face serves as a visual album, revealing content diversity and standardisation, introducing ambiguity in notions of dysmorphia.

One Last Journey
Alexey Chernikov , Master Photography graduate
One Last Journey addresses artificial intelligence and the instant photographic process through the telling of a fictional love story. Attempting to imitate the aesthetics of the Polaroid camera, Alexey Chernikov writes short descriptions of a couple’s last journey before separation on the Midjourney image-generating software. These images are then reproduced on a traditional Polaroid camera using a new printing device developed by the same company. Interested in the emotional potential of AI, the artist questions the reliability of the photographic medium. From one image to the next, the pair appears different each time, confusing the sense of reality. Using the Polaroid as definitive proof of authenticity, the project invites us to reconsider the photographic snapshot in light of AI.

Get the Look!
Romain Mader , Bachelor Photography graduate
What would happen if we let algorithms dress us? This is the question Romain Mader asked himself when he founded Get the Look! He set himself a challenge: to follow the recommendations of his smartphone’s algorithm and order clothes from online stores as suggested, without making any personal choices. Since the algorithm is influenced by his and his partner’s browsing activity, the result would be expected to match their style and personality. In his studio, the artist adopts a number of incongruous postures. By examining the sales techniques and marketing tools used by fast-fashion websites to encourage consumption, the series ironically denounces industryinduced addiction. Through the example of fashion, Mader universally reveals the influence of algorithms on our lives.