18 weeks Journey

As a Swiss citizen, I had to join the Swiss army for 18 weeks during the summer of 2017, my reportage is about the journey that I lived during that period. I shot this reportage using various smartphones: mine and the ones of my mates after I had broke mine.

The goal of my project was to awake the hidden, maybe forgotten, emotions of the ones who lived these experience before me and to give a taste of the army for the ones who never experienced it. I tried to photograph the evolution from the first week until the very last one. Every one changed during those weeks, I have to say that the army was not easy for me and at the end I was tired, and so, many of my comrades.

I tried to capture some part of our weekly routine, from the transfer to the barrack every Sunday evening, to some portraits to the night watch, there's no reference to my personal function so that everyone can get involved in this Journey.

The army is an experience that certain choose to live for the rest of their lives, and some, as the subjects of my reportage, chose to live for not more than the strictly necessary.

Everyone lives the army in a different way, and this reportage is how I lived mine.