L'Étiquette Bleue - Benoit Chattaway

The project began in 2022, following the artist’s move to Bidogno, in Ticino, where Chattaway was invited to engage with the work of Domenico Quirici, an amateur photographer active in the 1890s. Quirici came from this territory, and it was precisely between the village of Bidogno, Val Capriasca and Val Colla — places where Chattaway himself also moved to live — that the artist carried out part of his photographic research, strengthening the connection between archive, landscape and local memory. Through his images, Quirici documented a moment of profound transformation: the transition from a society still connected to forms of self-sufficiency to a context increasingly shaped by industrialisation and consumer culture. Starting from this archive, L’Étiquette Bleue does not limit itself to a historical rereading or a reproduction of the original photographs, but develops a reflection on the social, technological and perceptual implications of images. The work investigates the ways in which media infrastructures influence visual experience, interpersonal relationships and the construction of the gaze, tracing a continuity between the visual forms of the past and contemporary image culture. Through an approach close to media archaeology, Chattaway brings together memory, technology and social transformation, questioning the role of photography as a device capable of recording, interpreting and, at the same time, shaping the relationship between individual, community and territory. The exhibition will be presented first at focus Artphilein in Paradiso and subsequently at Photoforum Pasquart in Biel/Bienne, an independent centre dedicated to contemporary photography. The collaboration between the two institutions confirms their shared commitment to supporting and disseminating photographic projects that bring artistic research, archives, territory and editorial practices into dialogue. L’Étiquette Bleue is also a photobook published by Artphilein Editions in 2025.