Grimsel Pass barrage - Switzerland - 2019

The Bunker

What catches my eye here is not the altitude, but the way the landscape seems to recede.

In the foreground, the concrete wall advances along a methodical curve. She does not seek to dominate the mountain; she adapts to it, extending the granite with an artificial layer. The repetitive, almost mechanical formwork lines mark time more than space. The infrastructure inhabits the stage, suspended between the rock face and the water whose movement is no longer guessed.

The light is dull, devoid of contrast. It acts as a solvent that dilutes the scale of the wall, brings everything I see to a single grayish plane. Nothing here is abandoned. Yet, nothing seems alive to me. On the ridge, the hut has lost its function as a shelter; it is no longer anything but a derisory witness in the face of inertia that surpasses us.

I am not trying to denounce with this image. It observes this tipping point where construction ceases to be an event to become a condition. A stable state, made acceptable by its own heaviness.

The silence is not empty, it is massive