Shroom with a view: photo gems from Images Vevey

Pouting over the heads of passersby in the chocolate box streets of Swiss town Vevey is Daido Moriyama’s Pretty Woman. She strikes a monumental pose. The iconic image by the pioneer of Japanese street photography signals the opening of the eighth cycle of the Images Vevey photo festival, bringing a slice of Tokyo cool to this elegant lakeside town.
For three weeks in September photography transforms the town’s spaces, inside and out, with some ambitious and playful staging. It makes an exhibition space of even the most unlikely areas.
Photographs printed on fabric sheets hang from the trees lining the promenade, displaying the unsettling self-portraits of Marion Zivera in her exploration of body image using AI. Wooden structures that give the feel of a little village to meander through show Gauri Gill’s scenes of a community of traditional Indian mask makers redefining their art in a modern context. A forest of fake trees flourishes on a grassy patch in the town square – this intriguing series by the duo Kaya & Blank depicts the trend for disguising mobile phone masts or cellular network antennae as common vegetation across the US.
Across the square, gigantic, luminous mushrooms lure you into an underground bunker. Here, the depths are lit up by a dazzling series on fungi by Phyllis Ma. The Chinese American artist has had a fascination for mushrooms and an admiration for their versatility since visiting a farm where she discovered they were being cultivated under blue light. She uses her own vivid lighting and the inspiration of oriental floral arrangements to stage her sets, spotlighting this curious organism that plays a critical role in our ecosystem.
Each project featured in the festival plays around this year’s theme, (dis)connected: between the human and natural world; the past, present and future; memory and fact; or the intersection between humanity and technology.
In his series Get the Look!, Romain Mader takes a witty approach towards how we are manipulated by social media algorithms, asking the question: “what would happen if we let algorithms dress us?” In a series of self portraits Mader wears items recommended to him by algorithms prompted by his browsing patterns. The often ludicrous results poke fun at the marketing tools used to encourage our purchasing habits, but he makes a serious point in reminding us to trust our instincts and not the machine.
Coincidentally, Vevey is also the home to the wonderful Swiss Camera Museum which presents a history of photography dating back over a century. It provides an appropriate venue to host a retrospective of the remarkable career of Life Magazine photographer Philippe Halsman. His archives and personal belongings have been meticulously arranged and photographed in a striking series of still lifes by Henry Leutwyler.
This year the Prix du Livre has been granted to Indian photographer Debsuddha for his tender and intimate portrait of the lives of his beloved aunts Gayatri and Swati. Born with albinism, which carries a heavy stigma in India, the sisters created a life of music and poetry in their home in Kolkata away from prying eyes, only venturing out during the evenings. Taking an atmospheric chiaroscuro approach, Debsuddha tells the story of their beautiful, loving but often melancholy inner world.
Fiona Shields attended Images Vevey at their invitation