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VISITOR GUIDE

FESTIVAL ALT.+1000

1.09.2019 - 22.09.2019LE LOCLE, LA CHAUX-DU-MILIEU, LA BRÉVINE

PLATE 7 l #3 l Swiss Alps l Nepal, Himalayas, 2016 © Renate Aller

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table of contents

Foreword

mBAL

grand-cachot-de-vent farm

lake taillères

events

practical information

Contact

acknowledgements

Partners

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In the previous years, Alt.+1000 referred to the quaint village of Rossi-nière, where the festival took place from 2008 to 2015 in barns, chalets and on walking trails. This photography festival has always been dedicated to mountains. Rossinière is indeed an amazing setting but the work exhibited was not just about beautiful images. Mainly highlighting contemporary pho-tography, the festival questioned notions of territory and landscape through documentary and visual language. Artists such as Matthieu Gafsou, Simon Norfolk, Penelope Umbrico and Edgar Martins showed their works there. This year, Alt.+1000 moves from the Pays d’Enhaut to the Neuchâtel moun-tains. As in Rossinière, the festival offers art and nature lovers, as well as families, a photographic stroll through a remarkable landscape. The photo-graphy exhibitions included in this 5th edition take place over three sites, all at 1,000m altitude: in Le Locle, at MBAL (Museum of Fine Arts) and La Brévine Valley, the Grand-Cachot-de-Vent farm and Lake Taillères.

From the Pays d’Enhaut to the Neuchâtel mountains

The Human Footprint

Whether by climbing mountains, planting a cross, building a refuge or wor-king the steep land, man has left his mark on the peaks for centuries and this footprint is at the centre of the next and fifth edition of the Alt.+1000 festival.The event brings together some 80 Swiss and international photographers.

Nathalie Herschdorfer and Caroline StevanArtistic co-directors

Foreword

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Museum of Fine ArtS Le Locle

If landscape has been so often depicted in art, it is because it allows us not only to escape but, above all, to dream. The Alt.+1000 festival is dedicated to mountain photography. In Switzerland, the Alps never cease to fascinate, as well as attracting tourists. The work of Yuji Ha-mada (shown in collaboration with Images Vevey) and Corinne Vion-net both question this iconic aspect of Switzerland.

Mountains have long provoked fear and few people ventured onto the high peaks. Then, in the 19th century, mountaineering developed alongside tourism and photography. The exhibitions at MBAL show the mountains as they were and how they are represented: in the 20th century, through the admiring eye of Neuchâtel painter Charles L’Eplattenier; and nowadays, as we experience climatic change, the impact of which we cannot yet fathom. MBAL, in collaboration with the Doubs Regional Nature Park, has invited German photographer Henrik Spohler to become artist in residence and share his view of the Jura landscape. His work shows green or snowy hills, the fir-tree forests that are so emblematic of our region, but also roads and homes. Some of Spohler’s photographs evoke the pastoral landscape, where man is united with nature. But they are topographic lands-capes, as the photographer’s meticulous eye tends to emphasize well designed, tamed and carefully groomed landscapes!

At MBAL, the exhibition continues with the MAGNUM PHOTOS show, which includes the work of 50 photographers from the 20th and 21st centuries who worked for this celebrated photo agency and brings together the greatest names in photojournalism.

Skier sunbathing in front of the Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland, 1950© Robert Capa © International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos

Mountain geographies

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Part of this exhibition is dedicated to the most famous Swiss pho-tographer, Werner Bischof, and the beautiful photographs he took in the Alps during the Second World War. The show continues with pho-tography made in Iran, Mongolia, Japan, Afghanistan, Chile, Peru and the United States, to name but a few.

At MBAL, the visit ends with the timeless landscapes of French artist Noémie Goudal, whose work evokes original landscapes and places that connect us to the history of the earth and to the geological wor-ld.

The festival continues on two other sites, the Grand-Cachot farm and Lake Taillères. In the year leading up to the festival, Swiss photo-grapher Henry Leutwyler was invited to photograph the site hos-ting the festival’s open-air exhibitions. Leutwyler photographed Lake Taillères through the seasons. Once a month, Leutwyler, best known for his celebrity portraits and still lifes, visited this beautiful lake surrounded by pastures and firs. Always taken from the same place, his photographs evoke the passage of time and the changing weather in this remarkable landscape.

In collaboration with :

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With the support of :

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grand-Cachot-de-Vent farmLa Chaux-du-Milieu

The exhibition at the Grand-Cachot-de-Vent farm, a superb 16th cen-tury building located in La Chaux-du-Milieu, focuses on the human footprint through five themes.

© Arnaud Teicher, Col d’Izoard, 2360 m, 2014

crossing mountains

Arnaud Teicher (France, 1985), Cols alpinsSince 2012, Arnaud Teicher has photographed Alpine passes in France, Switzerland, Italy and Austria. In a stark contemporary aesthetic, he photographs mountain passes from one side to the other, sometimes focusing on a refuge or a hair-pin mountain road. Unavoidable for cen-turies, some mountain passes are now only left to cyclists and tou-rists. For Arnaud Teicher, they reflect the current territorial issues.Guillaume Perret (Switzerland, 1973), Les Passagers du Lötschberg.

Guillaume Perret (Switzerland, 1973), Les passagers du LötschbergTunnels are another way of crossing the mountains. The Lötschberg tunnel in Switzerland has been used by trains since 1913. Guillaume Perret climbed aboard with motorists and bikers using the train for the crossing, making portraits in 12 minutes. This series is exhibited in public for the first time.

Bruno Fert (France, 1971), Mortelles randonnéesAlthough mountain passes and ski slopes are synonymous with the holidays for tourists, they are also the route used by migrants and can sometimes be as dangerous as crossing the Mediterranean. For Le Monde newspaper, Bruno Fert followed migrants last winter at the Briançon mountain pass.

the human footprint

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Monique Jacot (Switzerland, 1934), Femmes de la TerreIn the early 1980s, Neuchâtel born Monique Jacot photographed pea-sant women across Switzerland. A daring project at the time, as it was a woman photographing women, country women as well. Comprising of superb portraits and a few still lifes, this series shows women at work, women juggling between children, cattle and meal preparation, powerful and happy women nonetheless.

Monique Jacot (Switzerland, 1934), Un hiver à La BrévineIn 1980, Monique Jacot was given carte blanche by L’Illustré maga-zine for a 16-page assignment. She chose La Brévine because meteo-rologists predicted that the next winter would be the coldest ever re-corded. The photographer spent two months in the valley, sharing the daily life of the villagers, following the postman on skis, the skaters at Lake Taillères and the peasants in the snow-covered fields. She took more than 300 photographs of which only 19 have been published to date.

Kurt Caviezel (Switzerland, 1964), SnowFor almost twenty years, Kurt Caviezel has been collecting images from his office. Connected to some 25,000 webcams around the wor-ld, he takes screenshots then organises his images in series. For Alt.+1000, he shows how man has turned the mountain into a play-ground, with snow as the main form of entertainment.

Tonatiuh Ambrosetti (Switzerland, 1980), Cabane du Mont RoseIn 2009, Tonatiuh Ambrosetti photographed the Monte Rosa refuge in Switzerland, an architectural and technological masterpiece located at 2,883 metres altitude. Although many alpine peaks are equipped with refuges, the design of Monte Rosa is of a rare modernity, far from the traditional wooden huts. It is a metal silhouette that blends into the landscape for some or is considered an eyesore by others.

Xavier Barral (France, 1955-2019), MARS, une exploration photogra-phiqueWith the scientific support of Francis Rocard and Alfred S. McEwen

Valles Marineris, Olympus, Arcadia Planitia, Elysium Mons, Planum Boreum, Icaria Fossae and Noachis Terra are all regions on Mars pho-tographed at a distance of around 300km by the NASA observation probe launched into orbit in 2005 and used to study the surface of the planet. Among tens of thousands of images of unprecedented resolution, Xavier Barral has extracted a series of photographs by choosing a 6km area for each shot.This selection offers a unique vision of Mars that reveals the geolo-gical and mineralogical aspects of this iconic planet. This amazing landscape has been sculpted by the wind for more than three billion years.

Project undertaken in partnership with NASA, the Jet Propulsion La-boratory and the University of Arizona.

Occupying mountains

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Yves André (Switzerland, 1956), CarrareIn Carrara, Italy, man has been extracting marble from the mountain since Roman times. Yves André photographed the quarries, a mixture of rough rocks and polished surfaces. We are so used to seeing this white marble on café tables that it seems to have been crafted by man even before being extracted. Yves André produces abstract com-positions in black and white, without any visible scale.

Moving mountains

Renate Aller (Germany/ United States, 1960), Mountain IntervalRenate Aller re-shapes mountains by combining views of the Nepa-li, Swiss, Austrian and French summits to create unique ranges of mountains, realistic yet imaginary. A subtle and effective way to re-flect on how the landscape is constructed and the truthfulness of images.

Iris Hutegger (Switzerland, 1964), Perception et illusionWhite and grey peaks, dotted with red, green or blue. Iris Huteg-ger photographs mountains then adds coloured threads to her prints. From a distance, they look like flowers or lichen. The artist adds stit-ches to her images to emphasize the artificiality of the landscape. Each piece of embroidery can require a week’s or a year’s work, de-pending on its size.

Yuji Hamada (Japan, 1979), Primal MountainIn collaboration with Images VeveyAfter the Fukushima accident, photographer Yuji Hamada received a postcard from the Swiss Alps sent by a friend. Fascinated by this image, he realized that the more he looked at it, the more unreal it see-med to him. Intrigued by this idyllic landscape contrasting with the catastrophe that has just hit his homeland, he recreated this alpine atmosphere in his Primal Mountain series using aluminium foil and the Tokyo sky as a backdrop. Combining artificial and real elements thanks to his technical skills in terms of focus, light and perspective, this series invites viewers to reflect on the capacity of photography to faithfully depict reality.Three images are also exhibited on the facade of MBAL.

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Benoît Jeannet (Switzerland/Spain, 1991), A Geological Index Of The LandscapeReflecting on the construction of the landscape, emphasizing the manner in which man tends to classify and tame nature, organising information in an era in which images are ubiquitous... Such are the objectives Benoît Jeannet intends to reach with his geological index by deliberately mixing visual languages, combining a stone with a cave, a quasi-lifeless natural landscape with an evanescent sky.

This section also presents a series of books by Swiss photographers dedicated to the mountains and notably the Alps (Claude Baechtold, Christian Schwager, Daniel Schwarz, François Schaer, Matthieu Gaf-sou, Maurice Schobinger, Nicolas Crispini, Pascal Greco, Thomas Bra-sey, Yann Gross and Yann Mingard).

Observing mountains

Warming up mountains

Ester Vonplon (Switzerland, 1980), GletscherfahrtIn collaboration with La Nuit de la Photo, La Chaux-de-Fonds Gletscherfahrt is the second part of a trilogy devoted to white, snow and ice. In 2013, after having stayed in Berlin, Ester Vonplon was de-vastated when seeing the state of Swiss glaciers: kept in the shade with huge tarpaulins in the hope that their melting slowed down, they are reminiscent of an animal in agony, already enveloped in a shroud. For three years in a row, during the summer, Ester Vonplon observed and photographed them, but also recorded a selection of sounds, the starting point of a poetic composition by Swiss musician and singer Stephan Eicher.

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Lake TaillèresLa Brévine

Global warming is the ultimate footprint of man on the mountains. Since 2008, artists and scientists from the Project Pressure collec-tive have been documenting climate change, notably the melting of glaciers. At the initiative of Danish photographer Klaus Thymann, ex-peditions took place on all continents and thousands of images were made by internationally recognized photographers, forming a global archive of glaciers.After Unseen in Amsterdam and the Vienna Museum of Natural His-tory, Alt.+1000 is the Swiss stop on the WARNING SIGNS exhibi-tion’s world tour.

Project Pressure has developed a carbon footprint calculator for visi-tors. Particularly concerned by greenhouse gases, the collective have made sure that their website (www.project-pressure.org) is hosted on servers that run on renewable energy. Each expedition, as well as the production and transportation of the works, are also compensated for. The Alt.+1000 festival shares this concern and is committed to the same approach for this new edition.

Norfolk + Thymann, Linceul IV (Glacier du Rhône, Suisse), 2018 © Simon Norfolk, Klaus Thymann

WARNING SIGNS

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Corey Arnold (United States, 1976)For three weeks in September 2013, Corey Arnold, artist and fi-sherman, embarked on the Polish ship Horyzont for a voyage to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. These long moments spent at sea influenced his work greatly. His images reflect the link between na-ture, water and glaciers. The state of the Hornsund Fjord Glacier has been documented since 1899, but Corey Arnold’s work aims at raising awareness on the relationship between climate change and sea-level rise.

Michael Benson (United States, 1962)Using various photographic processes to create composite images using raw data from international scientific archives, Michael Ben-son’s work is at the crossroads of art and science. He produces satel-lite-based views of both Arctic and Antarctic glaciers, the only way to represent the magnitude of climate change.

Edward Burtynsky (Canada, 1955)Edward Burtynsky documents how human activity is dramatically transforming Planet Earth. Man is both the cause and the victim of the anthropocene climate crisis that we are currently experiencing. His Icelandic landscapes are breath-taking, but they also show the extent of glacial meltwater runoff. Burtynsky reminds us that we are losing a vital source of fresh water as glaciers are melting across the world.

Scott Conarroe (Canada, 1974)Scott Conarroe’s large format photographs are part of the romantic vi-sual tradition, while placing the landscape in a contemporary context. The photographer studies the boundaries created by alpine nations and defined by glaciers. As glaciers retreat, the landscape changes, creating a new topography and new borders. Conarroe’s work focuses on land claim issues and the potential geopolitical consequences of natural boundaries being redrawn.

Peter Funch (Denmark, 1974)Peter Funch collects postcards and historical images to compare them with the current state of glaciers and highlight the effects of climate change. The Industrial Revolution, considered as the star-ting point of the climate crisis, led to great progress in photography, such as the RGB colour separation technique (red, green, blue). Peter Funch uses it as a metaphor for human interference on the landscape, artificial alterations and the passing of time.

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Noémie Goudal (France, 1984)To document environmental changes, Noémie Goudal has created a photographic installation made of biodegradable paper that dissol-ves in water. As the image disappears, the artificial landscape can be compared to the original. This mise en abyme recalls the instability of what seems stable, offering an accelerated vision of the transfor-mation of nature. Soulèvements and Démantèlements can also be seen at MBAL until October 13th.

Richard Mosse (Ireland, 1980)Using a large-format plate camera, conceptual documentary photo-grapher Richard Mosse photographed an ice cave located under the Vatnajökull Glacier in Iceland. Glacier caves are formed when air en-ters the water under the ice. The warm air slowly melts the ice, for-ming a cave. This process is becoming more and more unpredictable as weather changes and access to these caves may become impos-sible in the future.

Simon Norfolk (Nigeria, 1963)In October 2014, Simon Norfolk used fire to trace the boundaries of the Lewis Glacier on Mount Kenya, which had been surveyed in 1963, 1987, and 2004. His work shows the past and current state of the glacier and therefore its melting. Thanks to this spectacular juxtapo-sition, Simon Norfolk has created a powerful and unequivocal series of images that received the Sony World Photography Award in 2015, in the Landscape category.

Norfolk + Thymann (Nigeria, 1963/Denmark, 1974)In order to preserve the Rhône glacier cave, a popular tourist attrac-tion in Switzerland, part of the area has been wrapped in a ther-mal blanket. By photographing it, Simon Norfolk and Klaus Thymann highlight how humans adapt to climate change and the related finan-cial issues. The title of the series, Shroud, refers to the melting glacier lying under its mantle. Christopher Parsons (Great Britain, 1983)Christopher Parsons has joined a team of researchers studying gla-ciers and permafrost in the Sagarmartha region of the Himalayas. Field samples were grown and analysed by a microbiologist in Bri-tain. The bacterium reveals the microbiological dynamics and the organisms present in the glacier, which are invisible to the naked eye. With his photographs of Nepali landscapes, Christopher Parsons presents the viewer with multiple perspectives on the life offered by mountains and water, highlighting the need for preserving them.

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Toby Smith (Great Britain, 1982)Mount Aragats, an extinct volcano with four spectacular peaks, do-minates the Armenian plain. Its summit is the highest point of the country and the lower Caucasus. Its glaciers play a vital role in the distribution of water in the region. Toby Smith travelled to the area, meeting the local communities and exploring inspiring landscapes both for scientific and religious iconography. In this rural region with an ancient civilization, the mountain plays a major role, both in the local ecology and religious tradition.

Klaus Thymann (Denmark, 1974)Klaus Thymann challenges our vision of glaciers, often considered only located at the poles. To highlight the importance of addressing climate change as a global issue, he documents them as white points on a map of the world, showing that temperature variations and their effects on our resources are not evenly distributed throughout the globe.

With the support of :

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eventsPress visitThursday 29th August from 11am to 2pmMinibus tour from MBAL

opening and ‘torrée’Sunday 1st September at 1 pmOpening of the festival Alt.+1000 at the Grand-Cachot-de-Vent (La Chaux-du-Milieu).Food to be paid on site

ConcertSunday 1st September at 11amLes Jardins Musicaux Ba(l)ades Musical ensemble Batida occupies the galleries of the Museum with «Wel-come to the Castle», by Nicolas Bolens. This piece of music was composed inorder to be played in atypical and monumental places.Tickets available at the Festival Les Jardin Musicaux 2019.Price: 29.-This event is organised with the Festival Les Jardins Musicaux 2019.

ConcertSunday 8th September at 11amSamuel Blaser (trombone) & Pierre Favre (percussion)Venue: Grand-Cachot-de-Vent Free entry (donation appreciated)

Private view and Children picnicSaturday 14th September at 4pm at Moulin-du-Lac (Lake Taillères) The festival launches Christine Pompéï’s new book Grands frissons à La Bré-vine (Les Enquêtes de Maëlys) and offers snacks and juice to younger visi-tors.

Brunch at the museumSunday 15th September from 11am to 2pmEuropean Heritage DaysAmong two mouthfuls, the elders visit the exhibitions and the little ones arewelcomed by our mediator for a creative break.For kids of all agesReservations are recommendedAdult: 18.- / Kid: 12.-

Radio TalkSunday, September 15th from 5.00 to 6.00 pmAttend the Altitudes show by Simon Matthey-Doret on La 1ère relocated forthe occasion on the shores of Lake Taillères !

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La Grande TableSunday, September 22nd at 11.00 amBetween scenery-landscape and profund landscapeAs part of the artistic residency program organised with the Parc du Doubs,the MBAL is welcoming several specialists for a moment of exchange aboutthe necessity of the landscape. Free entry, followed by a brunch.This event is organised with the Galerie C and the Parc du Doubs.

Guided tours to the Alt.+1000 festival

MBALSunday 8th September at 2:30pm Included with the entrance ticket

Grand-Cachot-de-Vent farmSaturday 14th September at 11am and at 2:30pm Tour of the festival exhibitions with journalist and artistic co-director of the festival Caroline Stevan.Monday 16th and Sunday 22nd September at 2:30pm Free entry

Lake Taillères Saturday 7th, Sunday 15th and Saturday 21st September at 2:30pm Free entry

More information on: www.plus1000.ch

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practical information

hours

MBAL (Le Locle)Wed – Sun, 11.00 AM – 5.00 PMAdmission : 8.- CHF

grand-Cachot farm (La Chaux-du-Milieu)Mon - Sun, 10AM - 5PMFree admission

Taillères lake (La Brévine)Mon - Sun, 10AM - 5PM (admission at Moulin-du-Lac)Outdoor exhibition, free admission

Festival special shuttlesFrom mbal, via grand-cachot and lac des taillères

Saturday 7th September, Monday 16th September and Sunday 22nd Sep-tember1PM : departure from MBAL6PM : return to the train station at Le Locle

Price : 25.- (snack included)Free for children under 14Booking : +41 (0)32 724 12 12 ou www.taxicab.ch

Contact

Alt.+1000www.plus1000.ch - info@plus1000.ch

MBALwww.mbal.ch - mbal@ne.chMarie-Anne-Calame 6CHF - 2400 Le Locle+41 (0)32 933 89 50

artistic co-directorsNathalie HerschdorferCaroline Stevan

project directorAnouk Hellmann

PressCaroline Stevan - Alt.+1000T+41 (0)76 679 96 33caroline.stevan@plus1000.ch

Morgane Paillard - MBALT +41 (0)32 933 89 50morgane.paillard@ne.ch

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to the initiative of Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of MBAL, and to the generosity of the Vaud association Bien Public, founder and organizer of the previous editions of the festival in Rossinière, Alt.+1000 has been relo-cated to the Neuchâtel mountains. Thank you once again ! A Neuchâtel As-sociation from the Committee of the Société des beaux-arts and the Musée du Locle has thus been created in April 2018.

Bernard SoguelPresident of the association Alt.+1000

Committee Alt.+1000Bernard Soguel, presidentBlaise Oesch, vice-presidentAnouk Hellmann, secretaryMélanie Tüscher, treasurerCorine Bolay Mercier, committee memberNathalie Herschdorfer, committee memberChristoph Künzi, committee memberCaroline Stevan, committee member

Team 2019Anouk Hellmann, projet directorNathalie Herschdorfer, Caroline Stevan, artistic directorsChristophe Moinat, scenographyMélanie Tüscher, acciountingCaroline Stevan, Lauriane Liardet, Morgane Paillard, pressHélène Huynh, Audrey Zimmerli, mediationMartial Barret, Jonas Chapuis, Coline Jäggi, technical support MEO design et communication, graphic design

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Partners

The Alt.+1000 photography festival received the generous support of