Photographing what escapes the eye.
I am Jonas Hangartner, a photographer based in Lavigny, in the canton of Vaud. Since 2022, I have been building L’Autre Monde from Swiss landscapes, often photographed only a few kilometres from home.
I grew up noticing what others passed without necessarily seeing. Infrared helped me recover that attention in familiar places, then show them without explaining them on behalf of the viewer.
Returning to a place.
I work mainly across the Vaud countryside, the Jura and the Prealps. Images often begin on a road travelled several times, with a distant tree or a stop during a walk. Working close to home lets me return and wait for different conditions.
For Still Standing, I returned to the same tree across the seasons. For White Silence, I protected the camera under an umbrella while the snow erased my bearings. Vortex was only possible from one precise angle, the only one that avoided most of the power lines.
Still Standing · Lumina
White Silence · Spectra
Vortex · SpectraThis slowness does not guarantee a photograph. It simply creates the conditions to notice a relationship between a subject, a light and a frame. Some images arrive immediately. Others require several returns or the assembly of moments photographed separately.
Why infrared.
Infrared is not the subject of my photographs. It is the answer I found to a simple question: how can we look again at a landscape we think we already know? The camera records a part of light that the eye cannot see. Vegetation, water and sky then stop following their familiar colours.
The shift remains close enough to reality for the place to be recognisable, and distant enough to interrupt a hurried glance. Depending on the image, this light becomes colour, monochrome or interactive material. The technique changes. The search remains the same.
This language takes three forms. Lumina retains colour and a diversity of landscapes. Spectra reduces the scene to a tree, a relief or a sky. Living Frames introduces time and gesture into images from the same photographic practice. The collections move in different directions, but begin with the same territory and the same light.
Recognising without having ever seen.
What interests me is the slight gap between what we recognise and what we do not yet fully understand.
I do not try to impose a meaning on the landscape. The texts accompanying each work describe what is visible, the place and the conditions in which it was made. The image must leave enough room for each person to stop with their own history.
L’Autre Monde is not elsewhere. It lies in the same trees, roads, lakes and reliefs we pass through. Infrared shifts them just enough for us to take the time to look a second time.
Living with an image.
The print is the final form of the work. Each available photograph is offered in a limited edition, on Hahnemühle FineArt Pearl paper, with aluminium mounting available for every photograph. Prints are prepared and checked in Lavigny, then produced with Polygraphic.
Living Frames explores a different form: digital-only works that change with the time of day or the viewer’s gestures. No prints from this collection are available at present.
Choosing a work starts on its page, with its story and the available sizes and media. Each print is numbered and comes with a certificate of authenticity.
