Temporary Discomfort: Chapter I-V

Jules Spinatsch's Temporary Discomfort documents the security apparatus mounted around five economic summits, working across landscape photography, photojournalism and surveillance imagery.

The book collects five chapters made in Davos, Genoa, New York, Evian and Geneva during World Economic Forum and G8 meetings under emergency lockdown, with the camera trained on the police and military presence rather than the protests or proceedings themselves. An essay by Martin Jaeggi situates the work within the conditions of contemporary documentary photography. The book was awarded the German Photobook Prize in the photo-book category on publication.

The project is characteristic of Spinatsch's broader practice of photographing systems of surveillance and control, using the summit lockdowns to examine how public space is reorganized around the threat of disorder.