Vincent Jendly is an artist living and working in Switzerland
Episode 346: Vincent Jendly is an incredibly talented photographer living and working in Switzerland. I first met Vincent at the Image Festival Vevey, where I encountered the exhibition of the work found in his book Lux In Tenbris, published by Editions Image Vevey and designed by Nicolas Polli.
The work found in the book deals with Jendly’s trips on cargo ships across great expanses of water. Given the tremendous open expanses that Jendly has traversed and photographed from the ship’s deck, there is claustrophobia in the work. It feels cramped and anxious, resulting in brooding darkness, a psychological terrain more associated with the liminal terrain from a waking nightmare. The work’s inception comes from Jendly confronting his childhood fear of drowning.
As a young child, the artist nearly drowned in a local body of water. He spent time close to death, followed by a period of recuperating, and that experience left a deep cut across the artist’s life. In confronting the conditions of the open sea and documenting the experience through the camera, Jendly battled his demons, and the result is the book project Lux In Tenebris. On grounds of design and printing, the book has little equivalent as of recent. The beautiful and sensitive design by Nicolas Polli adds several layers to the experience of being aboard the ship with the artist, and the printing, handled by Mas Matbaa, graces the images with an extra level of excellence.
