Shannon Guerrico’s Photographic Critique of Swiss Landscape Stereotypes

Shannon Guerrico, a Paris-born artist based in Lausanne and trained at École de Vevey, presents a new series at Galerie Annie Gabrielli in Montpellier from March 1–30, 2013. Building on her 2010 series Whispers, which used photographs as intimate short narratives, Guerrico continues to explore what Walter Benjamin called 'a space woven with the unconscious.' Her latest work takes a more critical stance toward clichés of the Swiss landscape—chalets, conifer branches, forest waterfalls, vigilant foxes. The varying formats and melancholic black tones underscore a deliberate gap between reality and the fantasmatic impression the images convey. Nature is held at a distance, revealing its underside as neither free nor wild but ripe for identification. Portraits, objects, and still lifes initially mimic nature (a braid coiled like root networks, a strange armchair with antlers), then intensify in sentimental dimension. Whispers, obsessions, and suspended confessions permeate the work. Inspired by the Brontë sisters, Guerrico offers a literary reading of her images. The critic Lise Ott notes that the notebooks tracing the series’ stages deserve exhibition as well.