American photographer Shane Lavalettes latest project, Still (Noon), is a photographic journey across Switzerland and meditation on history and the transformative power of time. Invited to participate in a group exhibition titled “Unfamiliar Familiarities. Outside Views on Switzerland,” Lavalette dove into the archives of Swiss photographer Theo Frey (1908-1997), uncovering unexpected connections with his own work and ultimately using a 1939 journey of Freys as a starting point for his project. Travelling to the same twelve villages that Frey did, he found himself reflecting on the constantly evolving meaning of photographs. “I considered the ways in which Freys photographs have different implications now than the day that they were made,” Lavalette explains, “and how the meaning of my own images will undoubtedly transform with age as well. Photographs, I realized, are much like mountains. Though we think of images as fixed and still, what we see in them is always shifting, however slowly, with time.”
