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PHOTOGRAPHY

Analog Medium format workshop – 2026

with Anoush Abrar

Deconstructed Portrait The goal of this workshop, led by photographer Anoush Abrar, is to explore the meaning of the contemporary portrait.  Working with the concept of the “deconstructed portrait,” the students created an image in pairs.  The Digital Medium Format workshop week serves as an introduction to both photography equipment and specialized software.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Vittorio Franzolini – Still still

by Vittorio Franzolini

Still still investigates the legacy of Fascist-era architecture in Italy. Inspired by Futurist "parole in libertà", the title stems from the repetition of the same word, generating an ambiguity between stillness and movement. Produced between Milan and Rome using analogue photography, the project seeks to desacralize these buildings through close and displaced viewpoints, moving away from their monumental and celebratory representation. Walls and surfaces appear like skin marked by erosion, dust and traces of time, transforming symbols of power into fragile and vulnerable bodies. Still still reflects on the persistence of certain aesthetics of authority in the present and takes the form of a book and an installation printed in Comcolor.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lee Eggenschwiler – Standard Values

by Lee Eggenschwiler

Standard Values explores the opaque economy of colored gemstones in Bangkok. Conceived as a visual investigation, this project focuses on the gray areas of this industry, capturing the precise moment when trust mechanisms and global flows transform a simple stone into a standardized ideal of luxury. The book confronts the raw materiality of the gems with the urban space, creating a dialogue between the facets of the crystals and the architecture of the skyscrapers to reveal their similarities and inclusions. Yet, the images also reveal a sense of solitude within an illusory opulence, moving between empty shops and anonymous bodies.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Rose Graf – EVERYTHING FALLS QUIET

by Rose Graf

There are moments no one sees. Not because they don't exist, but because no one ever really looks. EVERYTHING FALLS QUIET grew from an intimate memory, one of school bullying. Familiar places swallowed by an unnatural darkness, bodies sharing space without ever truly meeting, a tension that lingers without breaking. Between recollection and fiction, between the real and the dreamlike. A way of taking back what was once taken. Of holding still these invisible moments, and finally giving them a face.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Léa Isoard – Almost Marble

by Léa Isoard

Almost Marble examines the circulation of contemporary female bodies within a visual and cultural landscape shaped by inherited representations. Using the Caryatids of the Acropolis as a reference, the project explores the persistence of ideals constructed through a masculine gaze, as well as the possibilities for their displacement. Within the Athenian labyrinth, portraits and architectural fragments come together to form a sensitive reading of a stratified city. The photographed figures can be understood as "displaced Caryatids": no longer bodies assigned to support a monument, but living presences that inhabit the city and constitute it from within.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Farah Mirzayeva – ANOMALIES

by Farah Mirzayeva

Inspired by a background in chemistry, ANOMALIES explores the boundary between scientific imagery and visual construction. After photographing machines which process or store data in EPFL laboratories, the images are modified by using scanning as a tool of transformation, to alter, glitch and deform. The process mimics the machines themselves: the codified images are systematically rescanned to gain new materiality, they become textured, unstable, and paradoxically analogue. The installation recreates the skeleton of a microscope seen in a laboratory, becoming a modular photographic sculpture of metal. A book completes this project: through sequencing, zooms and accumulation, it mirrors data processing in order to reveal the immateriality and abstraction of scientific research.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Ashley Schneiter – AMUL RAGAL

by Ashley Schneiter

AMUL RAGAL is a documentary photographic project dedicated to lamb, a practice deeply rooted in Senegal's cultural, social, and spiritual traditions. Through this work, the artist questions the photographic representation of the Black male body and the imaginaries associated with it. Senegalese wrestling offers a field where rituals, beliefs, and contemporary culture intersect. As a woman working in an almost exclusively male environment, the artist developed a gaze sensitive to the gestures, nuances, moments of waiting, and vulnerability that escape the spectacle. The use of a shallow depth of field turns blur into a narrative tool, conveying the uncertain boundary between reality, belief, and representation.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Shiny Vallenas – The Money Shot Always Tastes Like Bunnies And Donuts

by Shiny Vallenas

The codes of pornography have profoundly reshaped the representation of women within contemporary imagery. From the porno chic aesthetic of the 2000s to the clean girl aesthetic that dominates social media today, the same close-ups and fragmented bodies continue to circulate. Desire, being inherent to the image itself, now takes on disguised forms in response to censorship, transforming into viral trends. This project combines staged photography and AI-generated imagery to reconstruct visual dispositifs drawn from porn casting videos, OnlyFans, and the language of advertising. By tracing formal correspondences between the body, the animal, and processes of objectification, it seeks to make visible what a continuous flow of images has taught us to stop seeing.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Salomé Billato – Grosse

by Salomé Billato

Grosse is a photographic book that combines self-portraits, documentary images, and fictional images exploring the contemporary body. By reclaiming the word "grosse", a term marked by shame and stigma, this project questions beauty standards and their hold over our relationship to the body. It draws on the artist's personal experience with Wegovy, a weight-loss treatment that intensified constant monitoring of her body. Grosse explores a central contradiction: the criticism of these norms while participating in them. The book questions how far we are willing to reshape our bodies in order to conform to socially constructed ideals.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Colas Ravey – Un goût salé m'est resté en bouche

by Colas Ravey

The beach, in video games as in real life, is a place dear to the artist. It is a space where people, sensations, and moments of life intertwine. A place where people's identities and sexuality are at the mercy of the sun and the heat. Un goût salé m'est resté en bouche is a reminiscence of childhood, a time when video games were pixelated worlds where anything seemed possible, free from questions about self-image and love. Drawing inspiration from low-poly aesthetics, the project evokes a suspended moment where voyeurism, sunbathing, and flirting coexist. A moment where the artist becomes the avatar of a multi-purpose game, navigating between desire and freedom, intimate and public, in a quest for something that might be love.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Antoine Genoud – Galé j'armayi

by Antoine Genoud

Galé j'armayi explores how the figure of the peasant is represented in Switzerland, where it is deeply intertwined with national identity. More broadly, the project invites viewers to question their relationship to an idealized and exploited past, as well as to the traditions to which they are attached, in order to reclaim them. Visually, this takes the form of a video piece and a series of self-portraits where pose, clothing, and objects combine to recreate traditional peasant imagery while introducing a certain dissonance in order to challenge it. Furthermore, the roles of men and women are played by the artist himself, questioning certain notions of gender and traditional, conservative values.

PHOTOGRAPHY

ANALOG MEDIUM FORMAT WORKSHOP

with Anoush Abrar

DRIVE For this week’s theme, “Drive,” first-year photography students were asked to create a portrait shot on medium-format film. Inspired by the sensation of a first driving experience, travel, empowerment, or discovery, the week aimed to explore the relationship between one or more people and a vehicle.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

PHOTOGRAPHY

Le livre d’artiste - 25/26

with Anouk Schneider Agabekov, Nicolas Polli

As part of the magazine course led by Anouk Schneider and Emmanuel Crivelli, second-year Visual Communication students had the opportunity to design a magazine during the second semester. Students were encouraged to fully embrace their artistic freedom at every level of creation, whether in terms of format, paper choice, binding, layout, illustration, text, or typography. In this course, the magazine can take shape through various forms of illustration, such as photography, reproduction, contextualization, drawing, 3D, and more. The focus is placed on the author’s artistic vision and the means used to bring it to life. Students take on multiple roles as editor, curator, and architect, assuming the responsibilities of art director, designer, photographer, stylist, illustrator, typographer, editor-in-chief, and editorial secretary. This course highlights contemporary editorial design by exploring the narrative potential of a carefully crafted content sequence.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL Light House

with Jean-Vincent Simonet, Léonard Guyot, Florian Pittet (Sigmasix), Vincent Jacquier, Julien Gurtner

During a week of collaborative work, first-year students in the Visual Communication department at ECAL were given the ambitious task of creating a complete audiovisual experience, designing a light and sound architecture based solely on five original musical compositions. Using a central totem-like screen installation and projections on the surrounding walls, enhanced with lasers, they created a visual environment, broadcast in real time, which was presented as a performance to the public at the end of the week. The aim was to construct a universe capable of fully utilizing the space and the various stage elements, inviting the audience to move around and experience the live performance in its entirety. Five cross-functional creative groups, each with a different sound base, were supervised by Jean-Vincent Simonet and Léonard Guyot to produce images and test them throughout the week on the device, which was developed, set up and operated by a sixth group under the supervision of Florian Pittet, Matthieu Minguet and Achille Masson.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Pratique Photographique

with Maxime Guyon

This semester, students will explore how reflective surfaces transform our relationship to image and object. They become thresholds: what the object shows sometimes matters less than what its reflection reveals. Like a photosensitive material, they capture and replay the world, even embodying a form of technological and consumerist sterilization. Mirror-objects disrupt perception: as simulacra, they distort, double, multiply, or elude like a trompe-l’œil. They question what lies beyond the frame, showing what the object “sees” rather than what it is, and can become a space for self-reflection a mirror of their creator sometimes even fostering a narcissistic dimension.

PHOTOGRAPHY

CRÉATION PHOTOGRAPHIQUE

with Natacha Lesueur

Abracadabra! Starting with projects centered on a common theme, students develop their own in-depth work exploring the concept of “magic” in photography. They create a project that explores the relationship between reality and the imagination, using photography as a tool for revealing, transforming, and interpreting reality.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Applied Photography – 2026

with Calypso Mahieu

Le temps des Fleurs This course, which is both practical and technical, requires students to develop a true photographer’s eye. Its goal is to introduce students to, or help them refine their skills in various photographic genres, such as still life, portraiture, and architecture, as well as documentary and staged photography. These disciplines demand particular attention and great precision in the selection of models, locations, and objects. Mastery of composition, framing, and the management of light, whether natural or artificial, is essential for a successful shot. Throughout the course, students are guided to refine their observational skills and their ability to create images that are both precise and expressive.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Maisie Cuisine Book

with Maisie Cousins

The aim of this workshop, led by photographer Maisie Cousins, is to use photography as a tool to broaden our powers of observation. During the week, students explored macro photography to create miniature and abstract worlds using everyday objects and accessories. This invites us to reflect: what else are we overlooking in our immediate environment?

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL x Polaroid Foundation

with Douglas Mandry

This workshop brought together ECAL graduate artist Douglas Mandry, the Polaroid Foundation, and around thirty Bachelor Photography students. They had the exceptional opportunity to work with a camera that produces Polaroid films in a 40 × 60 cm format and weighs nearly 200 kg. This experience was made possible thanks to its operators, John Reuter and Harriet Browse, who introduced the students to the use of this unique device and the Polaroid Foundation team. Douglas Mandry provided the project’s artistic direction and supported the students in their experiments carried out directly with and on the films. The final result was presented as a collective exhibition on ECAL’s premises, revealing a particularly rich diversity of approaches and visions.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Gabrielle Coué – Sans témoin

by Gabrielle Coué

Cosmetic surgery, both intimate and technical, reflects our modern relationship to the body and its transformation. Sans témoin avoids transformed faces, focusing instead on what remains unseen: places, tools, invisible gestures. It captures the moment when the body changes without being experienced. Anesthesia suspends consciousness; the metamorphosis happens without witness. A desire is expressed, the body entrusted, then awakening. Between the two: a void. This void takes shape in images—cold rooms, metallic tools, close-up skin textures. Little or no human presence, only traces. The body becomes matter, managed within a controlled, standardized system.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Kristina Yenza – YOUNIST'

by Kristina Yenza

This book is not about war, but about how war becomes the backdrop to life. It brings together photographs of young Ukrainians aged between 16 and 29 — the age the photographer was when she left Ukraine, and the age she is now. No matter where you grow up, the transition to adulthood is always a profound, fragile but essential experience. In this country where war is now part of everyday life, there are still young people who fall in love, discover new feelings, doubt and dream. War has not erased these emotions; it has made them deeper. YOUNIST' is about the way we look, the way we act, the silences. It's about how we grow up with what happens to us.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Maude Bally – Entre 4 et 8

by Maude Bally

Entre 4 et 8 questions what it means to live with a chronic illness, in the details of everyday life, in the slow wear of a constrained body. It brings together images made for medical purposes, administrative scans, rephotographed screens, and fragments of daily life. Through a fragmented narrative, it presents everything that visually accompanies the management of diabetes. It does not seek a heroic narrative, nor does it dwell in complaint. Only what remains when illness becomes part of normality: curves, numbers, small fluctuations.A visual language rooted in the intimate, an attempt to make a discreet form of resistance visible.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Sofia Grytsiv – Rebrand

by Sofia Grytsiv

Rebrand is an illusionist performance on Instagram that simulates the rise and fall of a fictional celebrity character played by the photographer. Through staged images and fake media covers, Rebrand explores the mechanisms of celebrity, beauty standards and the treatment of women by the media. Over several months, she develops a realistic narrative tracing the rise of this fictional celebrity, then her fall under the weight of scandal, surveillance and media spectacle. Rebrand uses editorial shoots, paparazzi-style photos, fake brand partnerships and orchestrated scandals. The final work takes the form of a multi-screen video installation retracing this fabricated public life.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Lester Kielstein – Osmosis

by Lester Kielstein

Osmosis is a photographic research project that explores how migration is represented and politicized in Germany today. Created during a 13,000 km journey across the country, the work contrasts the visible rise of the far right with the quieter presence of migration, shown through protest images and traces found along the Polish-German border. Rooted in the photographer's personal experience in East Germany, the project reflects on the gap between what is seen and what remains hidden. By combining different visual forms, Osmosis questions who is granted visibility, how national identity is shaped, and how the idea of the border is being redefined.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fredrik Maag – Up There

by Fredrik Maag

Up There looks at Switzerland's role in the “Third Space Age”: an era in which it is no longer states but private companies which are significantly shaping space travel. Although much of the technology that comes to play up there is hardly ever seen, our dependence on it, as well as its geopolitical implications, are extremely far-reaching. The tension between apparent invisibility and simultaneous omnipresence is illustrated on the basis of Swiss involvement in the current Space Race.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Ettore Bruni – TOP OF THE WORLD

by Ettore Bruni

TOP OF THE WORLD explores St. Moritz, where luxury and illusion merge into a glittering spectacle. This project reflects on how exclusivity is staged—through symbols, gestures, and codes of visibility. Between curated appearances and the quiet remnants of a vanished season, I document a world designed to be seen. Immersed in this surreal setting, the photographer observed how people perform identity and how a physical place transforms into a digital dream—shaped by stories, filtered moments, and rituals of attention.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Belinda Kiela – Bana Ya Mbòka

by Belinda Kiela

The images in this edition are fragments of an immersion at the University of Kinshasa : a glimpse into student life in a vibrant, ever-moving capital. Through laughter, doubts, and encounters, the photographer has learned to anchor herself in a daily life far removed from the one she knows in Europe. Bana ya Mbóka — children of the country — gives a face to the youths who study, dream, and resist on this campus. Founded in 1954, UniKin aimed to be a leading African institution, but instability slowed that vision. Despite strikes, power cuts, and limited resources, the students she has met exude strength and clarity. This project reveals moments of connection, gestures of resilience, and hopes that persists through it all.

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Adel Debabéche – Ouled El Bahdja

by Adel Debabéche

Ouled El Bahdja offers an intimate glimpse into Algerian youth, caught between waiting and the desire to leave. This project explores the mental and physical space of a generation dreaming of elsewhere, in a country where the future feels suspended. It is a portrait of a fragmented daily life, where time stretches into boredom, yet a quiet tension remains—between resignation and hope. An attempt to capture those in-between moments, those gazes turned toward Europe—a collective fantasy, a promise of recognition, but also an uncertain path... Ouled El Bahdja sheds light on a youth that, despite sociopolitical constraints, seeks to build a meaningful existence. A gesture to make visible the dreams and desires for emancipationborn in the shadows.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Delio Testa – Partenopei

by Delio Testa

Naples is a vibrant expression of a people’s deep love for their land. This passion lives on despite the weight of daily chaos and hardships that run deeper than it appears. To understand it, a person must enter Neapolitan life, where devotion to figures from religion, culture or everyday life is everywhere. These icons give strength, inspire creation and sustain a constant desire to celebrate. Neapolitans do not just endure struggle. They turn it into energy and a powerful source of hope. This book reflects that spirit through portraits and documentary work.

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL × NNORMAL

with Nicolas Poillot

In September 2024, the start of the academic year at ECAL / University of Art and Design Lausanne, was highlighted by the beginning of our collaboration with trail equipment manufacturer Nnormal. At the same time, not far from our university, Kilian Jornet, the founder of the brand, gave our teams a taste for exploits by linking 82 peaks in the Alps over 4,000 meters high, shattering all records in the process. In trail running, as in photography, you need passion, discipline and endurance. Our Bachelor Photography students at ECAL are not all great sportsmen and women, but they are driven by the desire to achieve visual exploits. Trained in technical mastery, conceptual development and risk-taking, they spent three years in a field of exploration that allows them to seek out limits and chart their path. It's essential for them to get off the beaten track and find a visual language that sets them apart from the vast quantity of images that overwhelm us. ECAL has a long tradition of collaborating with top-level brands and professionals who, in addition to their own activities, wish to pass on their skills and experience to a passionate young generation looking for guidance in unfamiliar territory. Among them is Régis Tosetti, artistic director of Nnormal, who has a strong link with ECAL, where he trained for a degree in Visual Communication in 2005. Régis kicked off this collaboration with head coach Nicolas Poillot, also an art director. Nicolas forged his raw and elegant style by taking fashion towards the documentary. A guest lecturer at ECAL for several years, he has guided students tirelessly, with pragmatism and rigor, through the mapping of the brand and its visual expression. In a polluted, noisy world, saturated with superimposed stimuli, it is difficult to concentrate, to focus on a clear objective, a goal to look forward to. The opportunity offered by the collaboration between ECAL and Nnormal has encouraged a young generation of photographers to turn to the mountains. Nature is a terrain of escape, communion and adventure for an essential imagination made up of bodies and landscape. The main subject is the mediating element between these two components, the shoes that allow us to go further in this union. But there's much more than shoes in the work of Nicolas and his students: there are values of ecology, dry and wet atmospheres, solar and nocturnal lights, technical and organic textures, muscles and tense faces that achieve deliverance through their exploits. And finally, in trail running as in photography, despite sood technical and mental preparation and systematic study of the forecasts, there are unforeseen circumstances that force us to come up with improvised solutions that reveal new forms of beauty.