Olivier Christinat

Perspectives on EPFL: People. «As he often does, discreetly immersed himself in EPFL life»

Olivier Christinat was born on 19 December 1963 and trained as a photographer in Lausanne from 1980 to 1984. He started out as a freelance photographer in 1985. From 1996 he worked primarily on his own projects, creating three photo series — Photographies apocryphes, Evènements and Nues. In 2001, the 2002 Swiss National Expo commissioned him to produce the images for an exhibition entitled Le premier regard in Yverdon-les-Bains.

Alongside his own projects, he has taught photographyat the CFPArts school in Geneva since 2003. In 2004, Olivier was chosen by SRG SSR idée suisse as one of 28 photographers to be included in Photo Suisse, a large-scale project that involved a book on the artists’ work, a series of documentaries and a worldwide exhibition. Olivier decided to change course in 2010, when he left his workshop and studio to create the photo series Leçon de paysage, Autre leçon de paysage, Lignes de fuite and Nouveaux Souvenirs.

His talent has been recognized on numerous occasions: he was awarded the Rado Star Prize Switzerland 2013 at the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography and was invited to take part in an exhibition entitled Un autre regard sur Paléo at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, in 2015. A collection of his post-2010 work has been compiled in a book, Nouveaux souvenirs.