Pierre-Philippe Hofmann - Portrait d'un Paysage

A book about walking must be delivered on foot
SATURDAY 24 APRIL

Portrait of a Landscape

How to build a realistic image of the world? It was on the basis of this question that Pierre-Philippe Hofmann came up with the idea of determining a set of protocols which would aim to synthesize all the landscape diversity of a territory.

For the project ‘Portrait of a Landscape’, Pierre-Philippe Hofmann completed ten walks from the external borders of Switzerland to the geographical midpoint Älggi Alp in the canton Obwalden. After every kilometer, he filmed his immediate surroundings for one minute, resulting in a total of 2700 short films.

This intense experience of the landscape takes the form of a vast installation. More recently, it has also been transposed in the form of an interactive book, an innovative and fascinating object. With an optical recognition app, the reader can start from the still image and view several hundred videos, listen to short stories that are linked to the places involved in the work. The book "Portrait d'un Paysage, tentative suisse" opens like a pandora's box and makes the link between the radical conceptual approach and the discovery of all these small surprising details.

 

Limited edition & on foot delivery

Reacting to the context of the current health crisis, Pierre-Philippe Hofmann has chosen to deliver a limited edition of this book on foot within a perimeter of 15km around the Saint-Martin Bookshop. The buyer sets an appointment with the artist. The artist brings a numbered book on foot and designs a specific print that symbolizes the movement necessary for this delivery (50x50cm print on Hahnemülle paper, a signed copy for the buyer, a copy for the author).