Nicolas Polli is a photographer and graphic designer based in Lausanne. In 2012, during his studies in Visual Communication at SUPSI in Lugano, he founded YET Magazine, with Salvatore Vitale. Today YET has reached 11 issues, it revolves around different themes related to contemporary photography and showcases Swiss photographers together with international photographers. In 2018 YET magazine was the recipient of the Swiss Design Award in the Mediation category.
After his studies in Art direction at ECAL in Lausanne, from which he graduated in 2016, Nicolas Polli decided to start an individual practice and to focus on photographic books. His research and interests lead to the questioning of the artist’s book and the role of the book as an object today.
In 2018, after working on several books for several publishing houses, he decided to found his own publishing house: CIAO PRESS. “Ciao” became a laboratory to push even further his ideas and work with a selection of photographers, artists and designers with the same energy.
In addition to his individual work, Nicolas Polli teaches photobook design and photography in a number of Schools and Institutions through workshops.
In 2020 he established the project “Homelife Stilllife”, which will become a platform from November 2020 to help the education and awareness of still life photographers from their homes.
His approach is investigative and his personality extremely curious towards the inside-out, making him reach very intimate levels of narration and expression. Colours and light shades are also used in his favour, while he likes when the conversation sets in a kind of ironic and light way.
About ‘When strawberries will grow on trees I will kiss u’ – words by Nicolas Polli
My intention was to write something completely different from this, but then, yesterday evening, I had a conversation with a friend. Yet his words while virtually flicking through the pages were honest. He said: “I think the project works because it talks about solitude, weakness and insecurity. And you know what drives me crazy? The fact that talking about this comes so natural to you, that even when it seems banal, it works, and perhaps this is the very same reason why it does.”
I wasn’t expecting such empathy. I wasn’t expecting a photographic project to give me the chance to express myself truly and create conversations that today are really coming as a helping hand. Sometimes looking at some of these images makes me feel uncomfortable, it really does, but the truth is that, even if romanticized by my unstoppable need for beauty, they show what I’ve felt during these three months. Three months in which I had to stop and look inside myself to find a combination of insecurity and poetry, longing and lust; showing a side of my character, and perhaps that of many men of our generation, which is weak and unable to fulfill the needs and goals set by ourselves and by contemporary society.
