Portrait and documentary photography. Geneva.
First exhibition:
Focale O, 1988.
Documentary Photographer
Portraits that tell stories,
an engaged eye
Photographer
Geneva, 1964
4 × 5 view camera · Polaroid negative · anaglyphs
To photograph someone is to
accept that you do not know
what will appear.
An independent practice, developed outside institutional constraints:
from AIDS to cataract, from Geneva to Ouagadougou, from the streets
of New York to the workshops of Abidjan.
Drag →
A photograph is never quite silent.
This one is accompanied by the gaze and voice
of Charles-Henri Favrod.
“I would be tempted to see them, in a sense, as almost self-portraits, so true, faithful and honest is the transcription. I therefore chose one image, Adèle. Fascinated, I should say, by that dead eye, but also by the extraordinary presence of the person, by the evidence of existence, by the strength of both the subject and the photographer.”
Charles-Henri Favrod
Journalist, writer, photography historian and founder of the Musée de l'Élysée, Switzerland’s first museum dedicated to photography.
Charles-Henri Favrod devoted much of his work to photography as an author, exhibition curator, publisher and critic.
In 1998, he accompanied this photograph by Denis Ponté with his own commentary. His voice is preserved here in the original recording.
Original recording, 1 min 34 — Denis Ponté archives
Long-term bodies of work, almost all extended
into a book, film or exhibition.
Eight publications and one CD-ROM, from 1994 to the present.
Photographs by Denis Ponté
Available
cataracte.noirblanc.eu ↗
Available
homo-artifex.eu ↗ Order ↗
Available
faceaelle.ch ↗ Order ↗
Out of print
Out of print
Out of print
Read the PDF ↗
Out of print
Out of print
Read the PDF ↗
Last copies — very limited availability
Print media, television and radio from 1988 to the present.
First exhibition in 1988 at Focale O, with Première rencontre. He graduated from the Vevey School of Photography in 1992, winning first prize, and has since produced reportage in South America for Terre des Hommes, in Romania for the Geneva Red Cross, and on public-health issues — HIV/AIDS with Histoires de vivre, and cataract in Mozambique.
He has taught photography at the University of Geneva since 2004, on the Certificate of Visual Studies from 2018 to 2024, and at the Société genevoise de photographie (SGP) since 2023. Founding member of Éditions Place-Neuve.
Wikipedia entry ↗First exhibition — Focale O, Première rencontre
CFC, Vevey School of Photography — first prize
Two third prizes in consecutive editions at the Nikon Photo Contest International, Japan
Galerie Faits Divers, Geneva — founding member
Left for Dead — published in support of the Coalition for the Homeless, New York
Au bord du monde — Musée international de la Croix-Rouge
Polaroid Act I and Histoires de vivre
Éditions Place-Neuve — founding member. Teaching photography at the University of Geneva.
face à elle — book and exhibitions at Centre culturel Saint-Gervais, Bains des Pâquis and Librairie arabe
Homo artifex — documentary film, 62 min
A three-part project: an exhibition, a book and a film.
Screenings in Geneva, Sion and Valencia, Spain.
Cataracte — Corridor Éléphant, Fondation Le Quadratin, Ferme Sarrasin
