About Me

René Algesheimer is an award-winning photographic artist originally from Germany, now based in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. With an education in mathematics and music, he professionally works today as a full-time university professor and scientist at the University of Zurich. Combining his scientific and artistic backgrounds allows him to see things beyond mere place. René is widely covered and interviewed by numerous photography publications, including Frames Magazine, Elements – Landscape Photography Magazine, OnLandscape Magazine, or MediumFormat. He has received much recognition and international awards for his photography. René is the mind and editor of the book “Voice of the Eyes.”

René Algesheimer is a member of Nature First. Learn more about his engagements in this blog article about Supporting Our Environment.

Artist Statement

René Algesheimer belongs to a group of contemporary photographers for whom the experience of the outer natural world is neither separable from its eco-social context nor the inner conflicts between ego and heart. Instead, he portrays landscapes as alternative realities with higher meanings, where photography becomes something else.

For Algesheimer, photography is a poetic and allegorical medium: a means of discovering the enduring connections between the elements and the whole and of portraying nature as a fragile but persistent beauty. The landscapes he photographs are connective structures of a higher order who interact with intimate forms of lower order. They reflect visual connections and reaching out into another world of possibility.

Algesheimer is inspired by the Japanese philosophy of “Ikigai,” a purified form of beauty and truth. Using a visual language informed by minimal art and the ancient Japanese ink painting pine trees of Tohaku Hasegawa, he focuses on reducing simple, geometric, primary structures leaving viewers to interpret his photographs with the essence of what they are about.

Algesheimer’s photographs show a living world in transition, which exists for fleeting moments in time—preserving a memory of the landscapes.

He lives in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.