Alex Gertschen and Felix Meier, two Swiss photographers on the cusp of 40 years of age, have been collaborating for the past ten years. Together they create their own dream worlds. After first developing basic ideas, the two artists work out details in sketches before constructing complex backdrops and staging the stories in their atelier. Almost like theater directors they invest enormous amounts of time and effort one might call excessive. Supported by assistants and friends they fabricate every detail of the backdrop themselves. Precise staging of the models then follows, choreographed to the very detail. “Alex and Felix,” as they call themselves, create opulent, warm, and emotional images, whose temperature corresponds with the trends of our times. Their images translate our need for “ornamental” in a perfect way.

“Crucial in describing Alex Gertschen and Felix Meier’s work are the mise-en-scènes. Meier and Gertschen are not at all interested in reality—except if it is their own. Their images show a world they have invented. Their photographs represent their own theatrical performances, their own backdrops. Gertschen and Meier are directors of story telling. Whoever looks at their photographs discovers more than an isolated image, rather he comprehends the whole story.”

Stefan Eiholzer, writer