Emerging Artists 2008

Emerging Artists 2008

YANN GROSS

yanngross.com

Yann Gross's Horizonville series contains much humor, a welcome quality in the serious worlds of documentary and fine-art photography. But the project, created in Switzerland's Rhône Valley, is also as poignant as it is amusing. The characters that fill Gross's photographs crave a counterculture existence that has been mythologized by American movies and novels but that doesn't really exist. His images of a community trying to live a life that exists only in the imagination, in a setting so different from the States, are simultaneously ludicrous, sad, empowering, and funny. It's interesting to compare this work with Karlheinz Weinberger's Rebels from the early 1960s, which focuses on young teenagers in Zurich seduced by American youth culture. Both Weinberger's and Gross's subjects have a particularly Swiss take on their Americana clothing and possessions, which comes across as a little naïve and misplaced in their immaculate surroundings. Horizonville won Gross, 26, first place at the Descubrimientos (Discoveries) show at PHoto-España 2008, which means he will have a solo show at next year's festival. For me, Gross is at his best in his home country, where things are both familiar and alien to him. He has a great connection with people and is able to get his subjects to relax and trust him so that his portraiture comes across as easy and natural. Unlike so many photographers who think they have to fly somewhere "exotic" to find a good story, Gross understands that the most interesting images are right under your nose. -- S.B.