H. Moser & Cie. for HODINKEE, NYC, USA

H. Moser & Cie. commissioned watchmaking photography of the Swiss Alp Watch in production for HODINKEE, the New York-based watch publication. We followed the dial from component to finished surface. The Vantablack® coating absorbs light so completely that only one element stays legible: a seconds subdial shaped to recall the spinning wait cursor on a Mac. We photographed the manufacturing floor in Schaffhausen and the parts under controlled conditions, with almost nothing for the eye to settle on. The brief asked one thing: show how a watch comes together around a deliberate void.

Vantablack gives a lens nothing to hold on to: no reflection, no edge, no gradient. The dial was lit so that the one legible element stays readable and everything around it stays black. For the H. Moser watchmaking photography, that took longer at the bench than the production floor did.

More watchmaking work: Audemars Piguet, Omega, Patek Philippe and Richard Mille.

Part of our Reportage & Landscape and Still Life work.