Verner Soler: Vrin – Home Through An Emigrant’s Lens

©Verner Soler, Cover of Vrin – Home Through An Emigrant’s Lens, published by Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess AG
Vrin—Home through an Emigrant’s Lens is a love letter to my family, village, culture, and language—Romansh – Verner Soler
I have thought a lot about the psychological journey of the immigrant and am well aware of the experience of living in two worlds, straddling dual realities, and coming to the realization that the idea of HOME is difficult to define. In some ways, immigrants live in a sort of purgatory where no one place defines you and no one place feels completely like home. My long time friend, Verner Soler, has recently published a 30-year project, Vrin: Home Through an Emigrant’s Lens, that focuses on his connections to the small village of Vrin in the mountains of Switzerland where he was born. At first glace, images of Shirley Temple scrambling up the mountain side in the movie Heidi come to mind, but a deeper consideration reveals generations of hard working family members who have managed to maintain a lifestyle and way of living that is unchanged over the decades. Each year he returns to document his family as a way to remember.
Vrin: Home Through an Emigrant’s Lens presents Soler’s intimate exploration of an immigrant’s emotions when confronted with the accelerated changes in the village and its people, which he experiences as if captured in a time-lapse. His authentic, powerful images exude an uninhibited, candid reality. At the same time, they are full of meaning and longing. Combined with long narrative captions, they invite viewers to experience this place of power for themselves.
In 1990, Soler, born in the Swiss village of Vrin, in the Canton of Grisons, and educated as a primary school teacher, traveled to Los Angeles. His intended six-month stay turned into thirty years and counting. He studied photography and creative advertising in California, married and raised a child, and became a Creative Director with Saatchi & Saatchi in Los Angeles, where he leads campaigns for major global brands such as Toyota. His native alpine village of 250 inhabitants could not be more different from the metropolis of 3.8 million that has become his new home. Against the odds, Soler has tried for more than three decades to maintain a connection to the place and the people he left behind.
An interview with the artist follows.
Published by Chasa Editura Rumantscha and Scheidegger & Spiess
Instagram: @chasaediturarumantscha
Instagram: @scheidegger_und_spiess
My life is divided into two halves: the first one, I lived in Vrin, a small village of 250 inhabitants in the Swiss Alps; the second half in Los Angeles. The realities of these two worlds could not be more different, with hardly any overlap. Photography is a way of expressing my entire being, derived from these disparate experiences, in an attempt to reconcile them with one another. Vrin—Home through an Emigrant’s Lens is a love letter to my family, village, culture, and language—Romansh. Thirty years’ worth of photographs taken during my yearly visits, with captions in English, German, and Rumansch, adapted for each audience—an attempt to keep my emotional connection between my two worlds alive. – Verner Soler
Verner Soler is an artist living in Los Angeles. He grew up in the small village of Vrin in the Swiss Alps. In 1990, after graduating as an elementary school teacher, he moved to Los Angeles, where he gradually reinvented himself as a creative in the advertising world. Over the years, he studied photography at Santa Monica College and the Julia Dean School of Photography, as well as film, television, and writing at UCLA Extension. His creative purpose is centered on long-term photographic projects that focus on themes of family and culture.
Instagram: @vernersoler
Tell us about your growing up and what brought you to photography…

©Verner Soler, | 2009 Cleaning Currants II Johannisbeeren putzen II Schubergiar iuas sogn Gion II from Vrin – Home Through An Emigrant’s Lens

©Verner Soler. 2011 Sharpening the Scythe Die Sense wetzen Trer si la faultsch from Home Through An Emigrant’s Lens

©VernerSoler, The Last Hay Bundles Die letzten Heubündel Ils davos ponns from Home Through An Emigrant’s Lens
What has surprised you in creating this book?
Its reception. I recently returned to Switzerland to launch the book. We held the event in the village, and more than 300 people came to see it. It was an amazing homecoming experience for me. I had ‘taken’ (pictures) all these years, and now I was able to give back. Two great musician friends of mine (Duo Synthesis) collaborated in the presentation. Their music fits my work so well, and the crowd laughed and cried during the presentation.
The other surprise has been the interest of the press in Switzerland. The local Romansh newspaper and TV station did multiple features. The Südostschweiz (southeast Switzerland) press ran a full newspaper spread, and their TV station did a 20-minute interview in a talk-show format. Multiple online media outlets ran stories. The NZZ, Switzerland’s most prestigious newspaper, gave the book 5 stars. The most unexpected coverage was from ’10 vor 10,’ a national prime-time in-depth TV news show that starts 10 minutes before 10 pm, when everyone in Switzerland has one last look at the TV to get the latest news before going to bed.
How has the family reacted to being documented over time?
With incredible patience. There were moments when it seemed like I was photographing too much for them, and when they said so, I slowed down. To better explain to them why I was photographing, I started making small one-off Blurb books once that became an option, and they appreciated them. When they saw the first iteration of this book with the texts roughed in, they could finally see my aim for all these years, and I could see in their eyes that it moved them.

©Verner Soler, 2006 Cutting Hair Haare schneiden Tagliar cavels from Home Through An Emigrant’s Lens
I’m wondering if you are documenting your family in Los Angeles with the same rigor you have photographed your Swiss family?
You didn’t mention that in that fateful class you taught twenty-some years ago, so I haven’t.
No, in all earnestness, I don’t think my wife and son would stand for it, and I don’t know if I could do it. Even in Switzerland, I struggle with ‘participating in life’ with everyone and ‘being the observer.’ I somehow find a balance there, but I don’t think I could find it here with my family.
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