Zürich
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the umlaut.
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On the beach overseas
Icy water slaps at our knees
And the buoy was signaling
As if it knew we were far from home
-from “Winter A-Go-Go” by Yo La Tengo
…
I’ve found it hard to write about this set. It was my last in 2025, and technically the first of 2026. That’s an unfair pressure to put on 36 photos, to be both a retrospective and a kickoff at the same time. Additionally, these images exist because of a relationship my wife and I crafted with two amazing people. They decided to get married in Zürich, and we were invited to attend their wedding.
You can see the dilemma I’m in. Watching them wander this city, exchange heart-wrenching vows, and drink champagne overlooking a city erupting with fireworks on New Year’s Eve proved that their love for Zürich is an extension of their love for each other. For me to speak about my experience in this city is, by default, to speak about them. I led my last post with a photo of a car that caught fire. That doesn’t exactly set a precedent for what is, whether I want it to be or not, a toast to these two dear friends of mine. Nevertheless, we push on. Besides, I wouldn't write anything if I didn’t have an amazing time.
The first thing to know about Zürich in the wintertime is an obvious one: it’s cold. Very cold. There’s an inherent mystery to that. Cold and cold places make humans and other residents of earth behave in strange ways. People who claim to encounter ghosts report feeling pockets of cold air. A species of deep sea sponge in the waters off Antarctica has an estimated lifespan of 15,000 years. People who suffer from hypothermia often experience a state of confusion that causes them to take their clothes off. It’s like the loss of heat is caused by a type of germ that we can be infected with. Could that be why, when we’re sick, we call it…a cold?
Maybe it’s my first impression as a foreigner, but even though Zürich in winter is a physically cold city, it never felt like a cold city. I attribute that to the color palette. Most buildings have a beige, almost khaki tone to them. This means that, even in the whitest midday sun, the city still looks like it’s sitting under a heat lamp.
I wanted to bring that warmth to the center of these photos because it’s something I was genuinely surprised by. Maybe that’s one of many reasons why the newlyweds chose this city. Love is a warm and colorful thing and it finds itself in similar company.
I don’t consider myself a “street” photographer, though you will find many of these images present themselves as “street” photographs. I’m not sure I could define that term for you though. It feels out of place in the modern world. It sits next to other romanticized titles like “eccentric explorer” or “gonzo journalist”. The world runs on qr codes and confirmation numbers, so the idea of the street photographer searching for the “real” and the “raw” (whatever you take that to mean), is at best, a form of cosplay.
Has the “real” or the “raw” vanished completely? Of course not. Like everything else, it’s been atomized by the digital age. It’s a vapor, appearing every so often in the corners of a window after a cold and humid night, or on a spiderweb spun between the spokes of a bicycle. It finds you, just like how the newlyweds found each other.
Real, raw, or otherwise, the following photos found me. I hope you enjoy them.
Zürich
