Offers insights into photographer André Schmid’s estate held at the Musée Historique Lausanne.

In the age of digitally generated images, analog methods of depicting and capturing objects, events, and impressions hold a powerful, even nostalgic appeal. The thousands of analog, glass negatives by photographer André Schmid (1836–1914), who ran the first commercial photography studio in the Swiss city of Lausanne, constitute a fascinating legacy. His images offer insights into late nineteenth and early twentieth-century society and its norms. With their raw, artisanal expressiveness and a materiality highlighted by traces of wear, Schmid’s negatives capture a unique aesthetic of realism, transience, and poetry.

Many of his images are published for the first time ever in in Photo-sensible. This window into the past is juxtaposed with works by contemporary photographic artists Léonore Baud and Olivier Jeannin, as well as graduates of the photography class at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL).