Cherche RADIUMINEUSE
Cherche RADIUMINEUSE is a photographic exploration of a little-known facet of Swiss industrial history: the contribution and fate of the female workers known as ‘Radiumineuses’.
Between the early 1920s and the late 1960s, hundreds of women workers applied radium-based phosphorescent paint to watch dials and hands, enabling them to tell the time in the dark. For years, they repeated the same meticulous gestures in factories or at home, handling the radioactive substance without adequate protection. The bodies of these women, and sometimes those of their loved ones, were thus exposed to serious and irreversible risks. Invisible, many of these workers saw their health sacrificed for the benefit of an industry that today remains a symbol of Swiss excellence.
Faced with a lack of visual representations in official archives, I chose to produce photographs that are both dreamlike and spectral, inspired by the testimonies and memories of those who knew or worked alongside these women.
The project combines cropped archive documents with contemporary, abstract images and photographs of objects found during the clean-up of contaminated buildings.
The work is both an investigation and a tribute. It questions the historical silence and indifference towards the fate of the little hands, while highlighting the existence and contribution of these women in the Swiss watchmaking industry. More broadly, Cherche RADIUMINEUSE invites reflection on resilience, justice and the recognition of people who are invisible in official narratives.
UN POIDS EN MOINS ? 2021-2022
In early 2021, Anaïs Virg, artist and anti-fatphobia activist, contacted me to begin a photographic collaboration. The initial aim was to document the everyday life of a fat person in her private life and her relationship with the outside world, while shedding light on the injunctions and difficulties that it implies. Then, in 2022, Anaïs decided to undergo bariatric surgery to alleviate her physical and mental suffering due to her weight. The collaboration thus took a new turn, focusing on Anaïs’ journey through the preparation, procedure and recovery of the surgery.
Combining portraits of Anais before and after the operation, medical documents, snapshots from Anaïs’s phone and sentences from a diary, this project gives an insight into what Anais experienced throughout the process. The highs and lows, the questioning of her legitimacy to fight and deconstruct the beauty canon and, more generally, the weight of the standards imposed on our bodies by society.
Invisible Violence, 2019-20
According to a survey by Amnesty International, one out of five women in Switzerland has been subjected to non-consensual sexual acts, and more than one out of ten has experiences sex against her will*. While asking the women in my inner circle if these statistics concerned them, it was sadly no big surprise to see that many of them experienced sexual violence, and I decided to dedicate a work to their stories.
As a photographer, in addition of being a women, I feel it is essential to adress this problematic and systemic social issue because, as the author, curtor and photography theorist Ariella Azoulay has said: The absence of visual imagery of violence against women has contributed for years to society’s ignorance – and even more so to its tolerance – of this type of violence.
The project is featured in a self published book, alterning portraits of sexual assault survivors, texts describing impossible images based on the suvivors testimonies, and images of objects related to the testimonies.
* Results of a representative survey conducted between 16 March and 15 April 2019 in Switzerland among some 4,500 women (aged 16 and over) by the research institute gfs.bern on behalf of Amnesty International.
Aline Bovard Rudaz
Aline Bovard Rudaz (1995, CH) studied in CEPV/Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey and is based in Geneva. She considers photography as a sensitive channel for conveying messages on social themes and for giving visibility to intimate and taboo issues. She is currently working on a photographic investigation into the era of the ‘Radiumineuses’ in Switzerland, the women who applied radioactive paint to watch hands and dials. Daily contact with this highly radioactive substance was not without risks for these women, who contributed behind the scenes to the renown of the Swiss watchmaking industry between the 20s and the 60s. This project is the winner of the City of Geneva’s Grant for a Documentary Photographic Project.
Location
Geneva, Geneva
Contact
Awards
- 2023Winner of the City of Geneva's Grant for a Documentary Photographic Project.
Exhibitions
- 2025Cherche RADIUMINEUSE – Galerie Strates – Lausanne
- 2024Quand les images prennent soin – Centre de la photographie Genève
- 2023Du Nil au Léman. Regards contemporains – Musée d’art de Pully
- 2022Vfg Prix Jeunes Talents de la photographie – Maison de la photographie (IPFO), Olten
- 2021Prix photoforum 2020, Photoforum Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland
- 2020reGeneration4, Les enjeux de la photographie et de son musée pour demain, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
Publications
- 2024Femmes – Violences – Editions Centre de la photographie Genève
- 2023UN POIDS EN MOINS – Self-published
- 2020Invisible Violence – Self-published
- reGeneration4, Les enjeux de la photographie et de son musée pour demain – Le Musée de l’Elysée et Scheidegger & Spiess
- 2019Se chama gentrificação – self-published
- 2018Tupua – self-published
Awards
- 2023Winner of the City of Geneva's Grant for a Documentary Photographic Project.
Exhibitions
- 2025Cherche RADIUMINEUSE – Galerie Strates – Lausanne
- 2024Quand les images prennent soin – Centre de la photographie Genève
- 2023Du Nil au Léman. Regards contemporains – Musée d’art de Pully
- 2022Vfg Prix Jeunes Talents de la photographie – Maison de la photographie (IPFO), Olten
- 2021Prix photoforum 2020, Photoforum Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland
- 2020reGeneration4, Les enjeux de la photographie et de son musée pour demain, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
Publications
- 2024Femmes – Violences – Editions Centre de la photographie Genève
- 2023UN POIDS EN MOINS – Self-published
- 2020Invisible Violence – Self-published
- reGeneration4, Les enjeux de la photographie et de son musée pour demain – Le Musée de l’Elysée et Scheidegger & Spiess
- 2019Se chama gentrificação – self-published
- 2018Tupua – self-published