There are days when the downside of life as a photographer-the endlessly exhaustive task of hauling, lugging, shouldering all the necessary equipment from studio to location and back, sometimes for weeks on end-is wiped clean with a single image,
Call it a shooters clarity of vision.
Or call it a happy coincidence when the image you’ve seen behind your eyes since the day you decided to become a professional photographer is suddenly there.
The shot that comes from a place where ideas take shape is right in front of you. Mirrored by reality. Staring back at your searching lens. Silently saying “What took you so long? We’ve been waiting.”
Towards the end of a European winter as I wrapped up an assignment for Sulzer Medica and Herring Design, I found myself with a day to spare in Zurich. A bleak and garish winter day, devoid of warmth. Typically Swiss as luck would have it. The kind of day that resides in your memory in shades of grey with with black shadows and white flashes of cold light.
I walked the medieval center of Zurich, exploring the dark, narrow, cobblestoned streets, peering into doorways. Aged with its histories, cloaked in fog. Where were the images I imagined? The ones that could capture the Swiss-ness of Zurich towards the end of winter?
Rounding a corner, I found myself standing on the banks of the Limmat River. Ahead of me, across the water, one of its many lanterned bridges was silhouetted against a gauze of mist. A solitary figure walked the span, head held high, striding with arms pumping the air.
Slowly, the images I had pictured for years presented themselves to me.
Frame by frame, making their presence known slyly, shyly, and quite elegantly.
All in black and white.
How pragmatic.
How Swiss.
How Zurich.
