Joël Tettamanti
Joël Tettamanti (b. 1977, Efok, Cameroon), a Swiss photographer who spent his childhood in Africa, is a tireless traveller who visits some of the most secluded places on earth. He deliberately lets himself be guided by chance and unforeseen encounters and consciously ignores travel guides to ensure that his view of things is not obstructed by superfluous information. His photos, which are always taken in series, are reports on places and atmospheres, precisely composed in truly masterful fashion using a large-format camera, tripod and long exposure times. While people play only a subordinate role in Tettamanti’s photos, the artist’s keen interest in them is reflected in his exact perception of the circumstances in which they live. Lux, a series of photos he compiled for the opening of the Mudam in 2005, a third of which are in the museum’s possession, takes a seemingly objective look at various places in the Grand Duchy which reveal more about the past than they do about the present. Only in the selection of his motifs can a possibly critical and nostalgic undertone be detected, which he employs in his laconic reports on the industrial past, although he also shows the landscapes devastated by deindustrialisation as well as the natural and urban areas transformed for the benefit of car users. “There is no place I find repugnant. Not even a nuclear power plant I am photographing. In such places I always find something that is interesting or unreal perhaps.” (Joël Tettamanti)