We Are Looking into It

Swiss-based artists Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger talk to us about the evolving meaning and purpose of photography and the many perspectives it lends to history

- Vani Sriranganayaki

When this lockdown started, my family went on a cleaning spree, which, by the way, is still ongoing. For days now, we’ve been pouring over boxes of old toys, baby clothes, books and countless, countless photographs, including a large unframed photograph, too big for albums, and carefully packed between mattresses. It was a self-portrait – my late grandfather’s. I discovered that he used to own a photo studio back in the 1940s, when only newly married couples and newborns got their photos taken in studios. I then learnt that this particular self-portrait, taken much later, was one of his life’s last works and that it was all the more special for a technique he had used: no matter where we put the photo, his eyes were always on us (the lasting legacy of a man famous for his rather ‘strict’ personality).