Jules Spinatsch: Temporary Discomfort

Book info: Jules Spinatsch: Temporary Discomfort (Hardcover, 120 pages) – Lars Müller Publishers, 2005. Language: English.

Temporary Discomfort is artist Jules Spinatsch's documentation of three cities in a transitory state of emergency lock-down during two global economic summits (WEF and G8). It comines different photographical genres: landscape photography of the site, photojournalism, and police photography, but with the camera lens turned, atypically, on the security forces. The photo series and videos aim to achieve a speculative reconstruction of the situations in Davos, New York, Genoa and Evian/Geneva, while they also ask questions about the conditions under which photography is and can be produced today. Spinatsch's position while working on the project was that of an informed outsider--his presence in the area around the meetings was acknowledged by the security forces but not really appreciated, which was one the factors that determined his work. Spinatsch's new approach to documentary photography is theorized here by essayist Martin Jaeggi and presented through beautiful photographs with strong political undertones.