An 82-year-old Swiss photographer has captivated viewers in Schwarzenburg with an extraordinary exhibition that transforms ordinary bell peppers into striking visual illusions resembling human bodies, landscapes, and abstract art. Peter Zbinden's deceptive photography challenges viewers' perceptions, making them question what they're actually seeing through masterful composition and black-and-white imagery.
Zbinden's collection, displayed at the Pumpenhaus in Schwarzenburg, features images that appear to show deep, dark gorges cutting through rolling hills, the rippled flesh of a mussel, a penguin sliding belly-first across smooth ice, and a dancer throwing her head back dramatically. However, each of these seemingly diverse subjects is actually the same thing: carefully photographed bell peppers from his garden.
The inspiration for this unique artistic approach came from American photographer Edward Weston, to whom Zbinden dedicates his exhibition. Weston's photographs were known for stimulating the imagination, such as images of cabbage leaves that could be interpreted as flowing hair. Zbinden discovered his own artistic vision while gardening at his former home, an old farmhouse slightly outside Schwarzenburg where he lived for nearly 30 years.
During his time as a gardener, Zbinden cultivated tomatoes, eggplants, and bell peppers on the property's south-facing slope, where everything grew magnificently. He became fascinated by the stark difference between the boring, uniform bell peppers from greenhouses and his own completely imperfect garden varieties, which developed incredible, unique shapes. This observation led him to photograph each pepper individually in black and white, a medium he grew up with and considers a first step toward abstraction.
"I consciously played with the similarity that the outermost layer of the pepper shares with human skin," Zbinden explains. "Both have this fineness, this smoothness. And both get wrinkles when they age." Through careful selection of angles and cropping, he creates images where viewers might recognize a well-trained back with monstrous upper arms reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger, or in another pepper, an embryo.
The photographer's work goes beyond simple visual tricks, addressing deeper questions about perception and reality. He references a quote from Edward Weston: "It is and remains a pepper." Anyone who recognizes something else in it sees a product of the brain, not reality. "With these images, I want to question our habitual way of seeing," Zbinden states. He points out that humans naturally see sheep or faces in clouds because "we are trained to extract something familiar."
This questioning of visual perception becomes particularly relevant in today's digital age. Zbinden emphasizes the importance of being able to distinguish reality from fabrication, especially "when the world is flooded with fake images." His work serves as both artistic expression and a commentary on the need for visual literacy in an era of digital manipulation.
Several years ago, Zbinden moved from his farmhouse to the center of Schwarzenburg and no longer maintains a garden. However, his pepper photography lives on in this current exhibition, which opened on October 16, 2025, at 6 PM and runs through October 23 at the Kunst im Pumpenhaus in Schwarzenburg. The exhibition offers visitors a unique opportunity to experience how ordinary objects can be transformed into extraordinary art through the photographer's skilled eye and creative vision, while simultaneously challenging them to question their own perceptions and the nature of photographic truth.
