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“Sober and reassuring”Official photo 2023: Alain Berset spreads colors and smiles and assumes
After the bright pink of Ignazio Cassis in 2022, the official photo of the Federal Council finds austere rather than shimmering tones, elegant rather than fun.
Seeming a priori banal, the picture contains several touches of originality.
Federal Chancellery
Is the Federal Council announcing a year that it hopes will not be colorful? This is a tempting interpretation of the official 2023 photo of the Federal Council, published as tradition dictates on December 31. It is always designed by the member who will be president during the coming year, therefore Alain Berset.
The making-of of the photo and the portraits, in video
This chaos that had escaped you
The seven Federal Councilors and the Chancellor are all dressed in black, around a table in front of a large, very white background. The only element a little bright is the red book on the desk, which contains the Constitution. At first glance, a very simple photo, without effusion, as if taken in a hurry during a session. However, on closer inspection, details appear and nothing is left to chance by the Minister of Culture.
Have you seen the sheets of paper flying over the heads of the Federal Council? The Chancellery informs us that on them appear poems by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, which “discreetly evoke the chaos and the world tensions which seem much more present today than yesterday”.
The tone is not frankly optimistic, but nevertheless wants to give a signal of calm. “In a period of uncertainty and crisis, photography must be both reassuring and sober”, assumes Alain Berset, quoted in the communication from the Chancellery.
2022. Ignazio Cassis had put joy in his photo with this pink, and paid tribute to the Swiss rail system.
2021. Guy Parmelin had also chosen the sober note for his shot, even if everyone, this time, was smiling (except Ueli Maurer).
2020. Simonetta Sommaruga had chosen a rather dark photo. Premonitory, when you know the year it was then.
Annette Boutellier
In the center but without drawing too much attention
In style, the 2023 photo does not deviate from the codes of previous versions (see slideshow above). However, we must go back to 2015 to find elected officials around an office. It was then the work of Simonetta Sommaruga: hard workers, these socialists? But unlike his now ex-colleague, Alain Berset is back at the center of the desk, without however overdoing it in terms of the cult of personality. He holds the gaze of his vice-president Viola Amherd, who moreover overlooks him, while the six other people look at each other. “They form a college, but also interact in small groups,” writes the Chancellery.
We are far from the cliché of 2016, where everyone had their eyes riveted (and a little tense) on the boss Johann Schneider-Ammann, in the center of the image. It is also one of the rare times that the federal councilors look elsewhere than in the lens of the photographer. “The photo is intended to show the unity of the Federal Council and the good cooperation of its members, despite the different points of view”, says Alain Berset. The message: they have better things to do than strike a pose and smile, you have to work. And soberly.
A Vaudois behind the lens
The photo was taken by Vaudois photographer Matthieu Gafsou, 41. “To make it, he was inspired by 17th century genre painting and the Düsseldorf school of photography. It brought together all the members of the Federal Council and the Chancellor at the Bernerhof where the photo was taken,” writes the Chancellery. Matthieu Gafsou studied at the school of photography in Vevey and at the University of Lausanne, in philosophy, literature and cinema.
