Text by Annabelle Hondier

To create this body of conceptual work, Schweizer captured the moments before, during and after an object’s manipulation. These images break down processes into two- or three-part series, like the step-by-step guides of textbooks and manuals. In one triptych, Schweizer’s hand cradles a tulip head in the first photograph before squeezing it in the second, and finally unfurling his fist in the third image to show the crushed petals resting in his palm. In another triptych, a light switch is on, pressed with a single finger, then off.

Although Schweizer created these photographs in the 1970s, they were only published as a complete collection in 2026, edited by Steffen Siegel. Appreciation of the full series reveals the variety of gestures Schweizer was able to capture, and the near-endless dexterity of the human hand. Like John Baldessari’s 1971 Choosing series and Ed Ruscha’s 1964 book Various Small Fires and Milk, Schweizer uses serial form to sequence human-object interactions, which he photographs at close range. However Schweizer’s work differs from these American counterparts in its foregrounding of phenomenological concerns regarding agency and experience: it stresses the potency of touch as a means for expressing or developing consciousness.

The range of articulation depicted by Schweizer illustrates the hand’s exploratory capacity. The gestures demonstrated in Actions are mostly mundane, but several are markedly unusual, as in a three-part series where two facing cheeks are trimmed from an apple to leave only a slice of its centre hanging. Such deviation from the norm starkly evinces the repetitive templates we typically use for handling objects. The photographs are a formal investigation, one that employs the visual language of empirical scientific study to scrutinise and satirise the characteristics and variants of our actions, and the extent of their traces.

As children, we come to understand our abilities and
limitations through observing the outcomes of new forms
of movement, like throwing a ball and seeing how far it lands, or squeezing clay and inspecting the imprints of our fingers. Actions references didactic posters or books for children, by featuring recognisable objects like apples and eggs, and portraying processes like tying a shoelace, or zipping up a jacket. Repeated actions, like dropping a fork over and over, prove a consistent link between our head, our hand and gravity. For Schweizer, our hands – like the camera – are the tools of human agents for probing and investigating our perception and sensation. The hand’s versatility signifies the manifold potential of human action; Schweizer’s ultimate proposal is that our full capabilities are not yet understood. .