LEONIE SCHAFFNER

Cluster Photography & Print Exhibitor | 2025

 
 

BETWEEN RECOGNITION & DISAPPEARANCE - THE DELICATE THREADS OF PERCEPTION | 2025

 

Leonie Schaffner (born 1988) is a Swiss artist based in Lucerne. She works at the intersection of photography, intermedial art therapy, and socio-culture.

For her, photography is a medium of immediacy—intuitive, unposed, and free from staging. Her images move between minimalist clarity and experimental abstraction, seeking to make subtle, often imperceptible nuances visible. They bring the inconspicuous and the ephemeral into focus, capturing moments that unfold their own presence without artifice. Through partial abstraction, she creates an open space where viewers can find their own emotions and interpretations.

In her current artistic practice, Leonie explores how encounters leave traces—whether consciously or unnoticed, fleeting or with lasting impact.

 
 
 
Imagine a journey begins—without a fixed destination, guided by the power of human connections.

The first stop: a formative encounter, a person who has left their mark on my life.
The next stop: still unknown.
The final destination: unpredictable.

Each encounter opens a door to the next—to someone whose story has shaped the person I am meeting. A web of memories and influences unfolds, invisible yet tangible.
— Leonie Schaffner

DEPARTURE INTO THE FABRIC OF ENCOUNTERS | 2024

 
 
 
Journey of Encounters is a process of discovery, experience, and reflection. Each person I meet on my journey engages with the encounters that have shaped their lives through intermedial art therapy. The resulting works remain with them—as a protected space for personal reflection and transformation.

I, on the other hand, take traces with me: an analogue portrait, taken with a disposable camera, an echo of the encounter in my perception, a name or place that leads me onwards, a postcard for the next person, and a song that my counterpart gives me along the way.

I use digital photography to intuitively capture moments—unposed, in the here and now. For me, it is a medium for visualising the fleeting, for revealing the hidden nuances and subtle shades of encounters.
— Leonie Schaffner

BETWEEN CONFRONTATION & INSIGHT - ENCOUNTERS THAT REMAIN | 2010

 

A ROOM FULL OF ENCOUNTERS - A GLANCE TURNING INTO AN ENCOUNTER | 2022

ILLUMINATING THE TRUTH | 2013

 
My sensitivity allows me to capture the invisible—those delicate traces that often only reveal themselves in the aftermath of an encounter. Balancing between clarity and experimentation, between reduction and abstraction, closeness and depth, my images condense these elements into something tangible.

In this way, Journey of Encounters becomes more than just a documented journey. It is a living expression of what drives me: making the invisible perceptible, recognising hidden potential, and opening spaces for new, meaningful encounters.
— Leonie Schaffner

CLARITY & BOUNDARY - AN ENCOUNTER IN THE IN-BETWEEN | 2025

 
 
 

SILENT PRESENCE - BETWEEN PRESERVATION & CHANGE | 2025

 
 

TRAPPED IN LETTING GO | 2025

 

SILENT WITNESSES OF ANOTHER TIME | 2025

 

ARTWORK TO PURCHASE AVAILABLE SOON

PEELED TRUTH": A NOURISHMENT FOR THE JOURNEY | 2021

 
 
 

WHERE TOUCH ECHOES | 2025

DIGESTED & FORGOTTEN? | 2025

 
 

A MOMENT OF APPROACH | 2025

 
 

EPHEMERAL GLOW - BETWEEN VALUE & OBLIVION| 2025