Geneva, opposite the Lake and Mont Blanc, the European Headquarters of the United Nations. The Palais des Nations has many nooks and crannies that transport visitors into the past, in the 1930’s and 1970’s. These period features have today become banal, functional and humdrum. The architecture is authoritative, this place was built with clear intentions. However, in practice, the original decor has had to be adapted in many places, accommodated to respond to diplomats’ needs. By 2023, the building will be entirely renovated for the first time. The space will be redesigned, smoothed out, streamlined.
François Vermot is a Swiss photographer and cinematographer, he studied geography and anthropology at the University of Fribourg. He works on the links between spaces and those who evolve in it, questioning in particular the notion of decor and what is behind it. He regularly leaves his everyday life, voluntarily losing himself for a time in a new town, somewhere different. In this way, he pay homage to the ordinariness of a place and to the banality of reality, observing what happens when nothing is happening. The serie Palais des Nations has been exhibited at the Prix Photoforum 2016 (Biel), the vfg Young Swiss Talent Award 2017 (Zürich, Basel, Lausanne, Stuttgart), Festival Manifesto (Toulouse), and will be showed at the Centre de la Photographie (Genève) in 2018. The book Palais des Nations is announced for February 2018, co-published by Centre de la Photographie Genève and Scheidegger & Spiess Zürich.
