Born in 1954, Jacques Pugin became a photographer in 1972, against his father’s advice, and moved to Zurich. In 1977, he had his first exhibition at Galerie 38, a pioneer
gallery dedicated to photography in Switzerland, run by Suzanne Abelin. He opened his own studio in Geneva in 1978, traveled to Greece and won a federal grant for Applied Arts. His first series Graffiti greffés, where he draws using light in his photography, was soon exposed worldwide. Claiming to be more a visual artist than a photographer, Jacques Pugin practices an experimental photography where visual research mingles with a reflection on time, space and on the complex relationship of man with nature.
While photographing the traces of light, using collage, video, manipulating the colors, he proposes a new definition of Photography and his subjects. An early user of the
possibilities offered by the digital tools, he also worked with a large format Polaroid camera which allows him to intervene directly on the image. Since 2000, he travels
around the world for his Sacred Site series, supported by a grant from the Leenaards Fundation and returns to Switzerland to photograph and to give us a striking vision of the mountains in his series La Montagne s’ombre. His work is regularly published and has been exhibited many times, especially at the Musée de l’Elysée in 1987 and 2009 and at the Center for Photography in Geneva, which he co-founded. In 2017, his works are honored in the exhibition Sans Limite, photographies de montagne at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne.
