“Stolen Moments” by Daniel Comte

Sascha Zeitz Book Reviews 1 Comment

This book starts with a medical statement: “In 2014, at the age 51, Daniel Comte was diagnosed Alzheimer”. By this point, he had built a successful career as a creative director whose work has won endless awards, both in Switzerland and abroad. Daniel did something that, in hindsight, appears very logical but probably wasn’t so much at the time: he picked up his camera and turned to street photography, spending his days in the streets of Zurich, hunting for interesting scenes and developing his own visual language.

Daniel Comte, captured by Oliver Rust

As his eldest son puts it, Daniel wanted to preserve the moment, fighting forgetting. 

“Stolen moments” is an apt headline for his desire to preserve and remember and at the same time to explore and create. I combines the loss of his own past and past moments and, at the same, time alludes to the connotation of taking photograph as taking them away from somebody (h/t Eric Kim). “Stolen moment” is also the title Daniel`s sons and long-time friend Heike Rindfleisch chose for Daniel`s first photo book and his first solo show at Photobastei in Zurich in the September 2020.

The book has been a Daniel`s dearest wish for years and he dedicated a lot of time and effort on making it, while the illness was progressing and made it increasingly difficult for Daniel to contribute.

“Stolen moments” is a beautiful, well thought through book. The strong visual language of the images is at the heart of it. All photographs are black and white, most of them use high contrast. Some of the shots are very graphical….

… some are more snapshots…

… some have a humorous touch…

… some are almost abstracts.

What these images have in common is the insatiable desire to explore new avenues, to take a second, a different look.

Layout and typography are equally important. Some of the texts amplify the images. In one image of a church, for example, there is a big reflection (of the altar?) so that seemingly the church is under water. This is what the caption says, “Church Under Water”. The bottom third of the “under” is cut off though, as if it was drowning in water. Other texts refer to Daniel`s illness. Parts of the text are printed in a fading gray, as if someone forgot tho exchange the ink ribbon of a typewriter. Some of the letters are flipped, some of the punctuation marks are missing or aren’t where they shouldn’t be.

“Stolen moments” is a book that brings a lot of joy. Daniel Comte would not have become a prolific photographer (albeit for a few years only) if it wasn’t for his illness. However, it is not a book about illness, it is book about the endless variations of urban life, about everyday events and everyday stories, observed and told with a lot of humour and levity.

If you want to know more

Daniel Comte: Stolen Moments

Regula Fuchs: Der Krankheit abgetrotzte Bilder

Dorothee Vögelei: Fotograf, Künstler und Kämpfernatur

Daniel Comte`s Website

Author

  • Sascha Zeitz

    Sascha Zeitz is a street photographer living, working and shooting in Zurich and Frankfurt. Photography and in particular street have been an important part of his live since early on. As a viewer, however, and it was not before 2016 that he picked up a camera for reasons others than family snapshots. He has been an avid learner ever since, starting to really pay attention and see the world around him with different eyes - colours, light, fleeting moments - and finding and developing his own voice. Street photography is Sascha`s passion (and obsession at times), his way of being himself. His recent work explores the crossroads of people, architecture and light. Sascha shoots with his Fujifilm X100V and Nikon D750, both with a 35mm focal length. He presented selected work at photo20 in Zurich.

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