Suisse de Nuit

The poetic urban night photographs reveal the capital at night in a mysterious after-dark light that transforms the familiar into something strikingly new.

Inspired by Brassaï's legendary 1930s photobook about Paris, Suisse de Nuit is a visual homage to nocturnal Switzerland. The volume brings together urban night photographs from Bern, revealing the city in its unique atmosphere and mysterious light, that can be experienced only after sunset. As in the masterpiece Paris de Nuit, the focus is not on documentary description but on the poetic condensation of atmosphere, shadow, silence, and glow. Familiar streets appear unfamiliar, stations turn into stages, and darkness itself becomes the true protagonist of the images. Marc Trost follows in the footsteps of a historical way of seeing and translates it into a contemporary visual language using today's technology. A recurring motif of his nocturnal wanderings is graffiti, particularly light graffiti he does, which only becomes possible through long-exposure photography and adds a new dimension to this richly layered urban portrait and another level of reference to Brassaï.