Every frame.
A feeling.
Photographer. Cinematographer. Storyteller.
Finding the extraordinary in the in-between.
Selected work.
Films.
05 WORKSFragrance.
03 WORKSPortraits.
09 WORKSEditorial & Fashion.
15 WORKSSport & Documentary.
04 WORKSAutomotive.
04 WORKSLandscape & Fine art.
06 WORKSIn a world where you can no longer
tell what is real and what isn’t —only one thing is left:
What you feel
Machines can render a face, a campaign, a world that never existed. What they can’t render is the reason a picture stays with you. So I keep working the slow way — real people, real light, a real camera — until a frame stops being looked at and starts being felt.
SELF-PORTRAIT / ON SETThe man behind
the lens.
I photograph the seconds before and after a moment — the in-between where people forget the camera is there.
It started with a borrowed camera and a long train window: strangers, weather, light on concrete — scenes from films nobody had shot yet. I didn’t know it then, but I was learning to wait. To watch. To hold still until the stillness pays.
Today I work between photography and film — fashion editorials, fragrance campaigns, portraits. The gear changed; the instinct didn’t. Whether it’s a single frame or sixteen seconds of film, I’m looking for the same thing: the moment someone stops performing and simply is.
Alongside commissions I build my own things: SCENGE, a fragrance venture, and ARTVAULT, a functional-art project. Both are personal ventures — and both keep me close to what brands go through when an object has to carry a feeling.
That’s the picture I wait for. Not a pose — a presence. Fashion, faces, movement: all of it is an excuse to catch time being honest.
Now anything can be generated — a face, a campaign, a city that never existed — so the question isn’t “is this real?” anymore. It’s “does it land?” That’s why I still work with real people and a real camera: presence can’t be synthesised. You either feel it or you don’t.
I’d rather be afraid of what I dare to create than regret what I never had the courage to try.
Fear means the future is still mine to shape. I can fail, learn, change, and begin again.
But regret is different. It’s living with the thought of what could have been.
And I’d rather spend my life chasing the impossible than wondering what would have happened if I had tried.
Photographer & cinematographer in Zurich
Alexander Maag is a photographer and cinematographer based in Zurich, Switzerland. He creates fashion editorials, fragrance and beauty campaigns, portraits, sport, documentary and automotive work and short fashion films for brands, magazines and artists across Switzerland and Europe.
His work is built on real people, a real camera and real emotion: honest portraits and cinematic imagery made without artificial shortcuts. Available for commissions, campaigns and collaborations in Zurich, throughout Switzerland and internationally.