In my mind, Tettamanti’s surname has always translated into a hybrid of languages – Tête a Monti – ‘Head of the Mountain’ or ‘Top of the Mountain’. Something removed, at a high altitude: something slightly mystical. It was definitely the right name for a photographer whose beautiful, subtle large-scale works took me to far-flung places, revealing unexpected details and nuances about a world I thought I knew pretty well, but, Ondarribi, Zagaya, Uummannaq, Tarangambadi? No, Me neither! Tettamanti has definitely been to the top of the mountain.

At the vanguard of École cantonale d’art de Lausanne’s (ECAL) photographic renaissance in the early 2000s (under the guidance of then-course leader Pierre Fantys), Tettamanti’s work fascinated me, especially his series Cols Alpins (2001). Here were vast, craggy slabs of impregnable alpine rock often swathed in mist or smeared with snow. Seemingly innocuous or inconsequential scenes, seen through the gaze of his camera they were exquisite and mesmerizing in their detail and evocativeness. Scale was hard to read and I searched for clues in the photographs. Invariably there were marks – roads or walls or barriers – visible somewhere in the photograph. Manmade interventions that helped situate the picture slightly but still left me wondering further at these other-worldly scenes.

Since then, I have followed Tettamanti’s output closely and frequently discovered the world through his photographs. A ‘good’ documentary photograph educates us. It shows us things we know we will never see, and if we give the image time we can learn (and imagine) a lot. Tettamanti’s attraction to unknown and often distinctly un-photogenic parts of the world might seem faintly perverse, however, he has the ability to create absorbing images from both the epic and the mundane with equal impassiveness. There is a sense of anthropological wonder at man’s countless ways of interacting with, and trying to frame, contain or cope with nature in his work. Tettamanti photographs agglomerations, cities, rural areas, storage facilities, deserts, research labs and glaciers. He connects the qualities and properties these disparate places around the globe share, often creating a whole narrative in a temporary space, be it a remote suburb or a hastily-constructed shelter. This discrete and thoughtful approach reflects the photographer’s preferred way of working. In his book Local Studies (2006) Tettamanti states, ‘Sometimes when I work in crowded places or places I am not really allowed to go to I would like to be perceived as a worker, or someone measuring the environment. That would make my work easier’. A decade later this is still the case. He writes, “Unfortunately it’s still the same. I’m a bit shy when I work, which sounds strange, as there are pictures on the web showing me working, but it gives the wrong idea. I would rather work with an iPhone if I could have same results!”

Invariably his projects comprise a mix of views devoid of all but the smallest figures as well as close-up, formal portraits of people he has encountered there. On this subject he states:

I am fascinated by the shapes and forms of the places I shoot. A silhouette of a person would probably give the wrong idea of what I am fascinated by, I would enter into a less constructed image. [But] when I take a portrait of someone there is also this emptiness I believe. It’s the fascination of the body, the shape of the face. I treat the subject exactly like I would treat a piece of architecture or a landscape.

Looking at the margins of places as it does, Tettamanti’s work has gradually become more difficult to create in the current climate. Freedom of movement has gone from much of the world. Places have become more off-limits than ever before. People are suspicious of a stranger lurking around their neighbourhood – especially one who spends long nights lurking in scrubland or on the outskirts of a town, as is necessary for long exposures on sheet film. So will this force Tettamanti to reappraise his work, and to rethink what it should show? As the photographer says, “I am not so flexible anymore and it frightens me. At the moment I’m more into going to live in small places that are remote from politics. I don’t want to go to capital cities anymore. But on the other hand, to keep on travelling like that is again a statement, even stronger than before I think.”