HELVETIA
HELVETIA
CREDITS
Kathrin Mundwiler (b. 1984, Switzerland) started her project Helvetia after having been away from her homeland for years. Now living in the Netherlands, far away from her family and roots, she began looking at Switzerland from a distance. This is when she noticed the typical Swiss hedgehog mentality. Suddenly, familiar landscapes, faces, and cultural curiosities had become utterly strange. Even some popular traditions, like young boys smoking tobacco at certain celebrations during the year, stopped fitting the photographer’s world view and became something alien.
Helvetia is the result of Mundwiler travelling through Switzerland, looking and longing for reconnection with her roots and trying to make sense of the place she still calls her motherland. Devoted to the ordinary, in her poetic and investigative series, the photographer flirts with the grotesque by highlighting the encounters with her past life in Switzerland.
This portfolio is a continuation of the theme of GUP #61: Escape.
Helvetia by Kathrin Mundwiler was featured in New Dutch Photography Talent 2019.
