Jules Spinatsch, a Swiss-born photographer, was awarded the 1st annual BMW-Paris Photo Prize for Photography in November 2004. The winning series of photographs, large-format abstracts of machine-groomed ski slopes illuminated only by the headlights of the snow cat machines that groom them late at night, is part of work-in-progress ironically named “Snow Management”.

The new work shares a sensibility with Spinatsch’s earlier bodies of work — the photographer’s consistent examination of human obsession for control — over nature, politics, each other, and public perception.

Here, we are pleased to present photos from the just-completed, multi-year series that Spinatsch has made showing the “Temporary Discomfort” created when summits of government leaders temporarily take over cities around the world — and change those cities dramatically in the name of “security”.

In a 10-minute audio interview for Lens Culture, Spinatsch talks about his thinking behind the “Temporary Discomfort” series, which was published in 2006 as a 128-page monograph by Lars Müller Publishers-CH.

— Jim Casper

    

Temporary Discomfort
by Jules Spinatsch
With Martin Jäggi, author and editor
German and English
Hardcover, 120 pages
80 color photographs
9.5 x 11.75 inches
Publisher: Lars Muller, 2006
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