A Look Back at Fribourg’s Vanished Industrial Past
Three Fribourg-based photographers turn to their archives to pay homage to the city’s former industrial sites, now disappeared. Their exhibition traces the history of emblematic places such as the Cardinal brewery, the sawmill at Ritter Hall, and the Boxal aluminum packaging plant, offering a quiet look into a city where smoke and rivets once defined the skyline.
These photographs capture the last moments of these factories before closure or repurposing. There is still the smell of the factory; the worker is still there, says photographer Yves Eigenmann during a broadcast interview on 19h30, September 29.
Voices Behind the Lens: Three Local Photographers
In Fribourg’s archives, three photographers examine not only machines but the human traces left in industrial spaces. One of them, Christophe Maradan, explains that photography can be a form of memory: When we take photos, these moments are a little emotional; we turn a page.
Together, they search for the fragile line between industry and memory, where steel and brick hold footprints of the workers who once moved through them.
Places That Shaped a City and How They Remember It
The Cardinal brewery stands as a symbol of Fribourg’s industrial era. The first major threat of closure came in 1996, and when Maradan revisited the site in 2010, the plant operated with a tiny workforce—perhaps twenty people—out of a peak staff of around four hundred. Such contrasts expose the social and economic shifts that reshaped the city.
The industrial footprint also includes the sawmill in Ritter Hall, which today houses the Haute École d’ingénierie et d’architecture de Fribourg. The exhibition helps visitors trace how a single building can transition from factory floor to educational campus, while preserving the ghostly echoes of machines and routines.
As with the Boxal aluminum packaging plant, many sites have vanished or been repurposed, leaving only photographs and memory to tell their stories. The exhibit becomes a map of what Fribourg was, and what it has become, showing how urban development often swallows industry yet leaves behind a trace ready to be rediscovered.
Why It Matters: Memory, Urban Change, and Public Heritage
Beyond nostalgia, the project reminds visitors that industrial heritage is a living dialogue with the present. The photographs invite reflection on how cities negotiate progress with memory, and how archives can help communities understand the stakes of modernization. The exhibition fills gaps in the collective memory, letting residents and visitors travel through time at the heart of Fribourg’s heritage.
Propos recueillis by Carine Regidor. Web adaptation by Sébastien Foggiato.
