Some tools require our total commitment, know-how and will in their use. What they say about us led me to undertake a first series of photographs confronting firearms and metal prostheses, staged as therapeutic or coercive totems.

The photograph offered here is from a series of sixty, forming a fresco intended to adorn one of the rooms of the Château de Morges, in Switzerland. These halberds dating back to the XVI-XVII century all have a unique graphic silhouette (evoking territorial boundaries) and stigmata that expose their passage through time.

The present work proposes a reflection on our daily actions, our history, and our personal relationship to the defense of our freedoms.

Jess Hoffman

Jess Hoffman is a world renown photographer with a decades long career working for the greatest names of horology. Since 2017 he has been working for Phillips Watches Geneva as photographer of the Geneva auction catalogues. When not shooting for the watch industry Hoffman works on photograhic projects pertaining society. He is also an author, painter and an avid sailor.

Full proceeds of the sale of the present photograph will go to Vivere, a Swiss non governmental organisation dedicated to fighting for human rights around the globe and particularly human trafficking and protection of children and lone mothers. For more information please visit www.vivere.ch.