During construction of the Bank’s new headquarters, Pictet & Cie invited Claudio Moser to let his photographic eye range freely over the building site. At four different moments he came to capture the building in a wide variety of situations as it went up.

The images that resulted from his observations show unexpected formal and poetic connections between objects and materials, the space and the history of the site. A network of pipes seems to dialogue with Piet Mondrian’s abstract painting, a small puddle of water between two layers of plastic points the viewer’s imagination in the direction of Jean Arp’s reliefs or Alvar Aalto’s vases, a splash of paint becomes a pictorial gesture, an air-conditioning duct now takes on the look of a sculpture, pieces of insulation dance with unfinished concrete and office blinds reflecting in the windows give off a novel depth of field.

At times a bit of narrative is invited into the photograph’s complex web of connections. As the contractors leave the site, for instance, the building materials, waiting to be put to use, come together outright, take centre stage, look each over, converse, strike a pose, before settling down and freezing in place. Nature, structure and architecture meet and mirror one another in the shifting setting of the building site and the pirouetting encounter of elements that remains deaf to any human presence. With Claudio Moser, a world opens up to those who agree to recognise its existence and give it a moment of their attention.