by Teju Cole
First published 2020
Teju Cole spent five years traveling through Switzerland with his camera, returning season after season to capture a country that has drawn tourists for two centuries. From Vaud to Graubünden to Lugano, he photographed Alpine landscapes and urban spaces with color film, finding new angles on familiar terrain. The images reveal a nation both carefully maintained and marked by invisible histories. Cole works with the patience of European masters but brings his own constructivist eye to compositions that feel both serene and tense. His photographs show Switzerland mostly empty of people yet full of human traces. The book takes its title from the German word for yearning to be somewhere else, and Cole's vision captures both the beauty that draws visitors and the stories hidden beneath Switzerland's polished surface.
Genres: art, travel, 21st-century, photography
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: observational, travelogue
Setting: Graubünden, Lugano, Switzerland, Vaud
Period: 21st-century
Hardcover · MACK