Patrik Hänggi, photographer

About

It started with the first Kodak film in my father’s camera. At sixteen I sold my first picture to a newspaper. Since then I have pressed the shutter a few million times — very different photographs, and yet there was always a «Patrik» in them. Film and text have come along since. Imagination is my raw material, ideas are my tools.

I am Patrik Hänggi — photographer, filmmaker and content creator, with a large studio in Zwingen and a straight way of looking at things. Pictures with substance matter to me. I know my trade, and that is exactly why I stay curious: I keep working on how I see, start new things, and try out in film and photography what I cannot do yet.

I photograph and film for people and companies in the Basel region and across Switzerland. My shoots are shoots people actually enjoy — and at the end there are pictures that stay, and films that get passed on.

Commercial photography, a corporate film, a wedding reportage or a Starportrait session — you are the subject. I make you visible.

GET IN TOUCH
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Patrik Hänggi — photographer and filmmaker, portrait
COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY  ✦  FILM & VIDEO  ✦  WEB  ✦  WEDDINGS  ✦  STARPORTRAITS  ✦  CORPORATE  ✦  PROFILE & APPLICATION  ✦  BOOST YOUR VISIBILITY  ✦  COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY  ✦  FILM & VIDEO  ✦  WEB  ✦  WEDDINGS  ✦  STARPORTRAITS  ✦  CORPORATE  ✦  PROFILE & APPLICATION  ✦  BOOST YOUR VISIBILITY  ✦  
App icon of Patrik Hänggi — PH monogram

New: my website is now an app as well

I stay curious. Whatever technology allows, I try out — and this website can now be placed on your phone. No need to google Patrik Hänggi, just tap the app. It runs even when reception is poor.

No app store, no sign-up. I hope it gives you as much pleasure as it gives me.

SEVEN QUESTIONS, STRAIGHT ANSWERS

Patrik, in conversation

Patrik, you have been photographing for over three decades. What has changed — and what has stayed?
«Almost everything has changed: film, digital, Photoshop, now AI. What has stayed is what counts: the magic of catching a moment, fast and on instinct. The moment when someone in front of the camera forgets they are being photographed. No technology can produce that. When people are comfortable, the pictures are good. That has not changed since the first Kodak film in my father’s camera.»
Every phone takes «good pictures» now. So what do we need you for?
«A quick ‹good picture› — privately that is simply nice. In advertising, a picture that does not work can cost a lot of money. A good picture is a long way from an effective one. My work starts before the shot: with the idea, the concept for the picture, now and then the whole campaign — so that the picture serves the thing it was made for. And it consists of catching what is essential: about a person, a group, a process, a product. Show what is essential and you need no effects — but you do need a look, and a story that reaches us.»
Did you design this website yourself?
«Yes — and I had a lot of fun putting in all the ideas I had been carrying around: the colours, the interactive parts, the texts and the whole logic of it. Creativity starts for me in a visual idea and runs into the musical, the inventive, the verbal and the technical — bringing that together is the work. The price calculator, for instance: entirely in the spirit of visibility — prices on the table. Obviously not everything can be quoted, some things stay an enquiry. But you know where you stand straight away. A direct call, WhatsApp — I wanted those in there. And the visual tools are not effects, they are storytelling: people should get to know me a little through this website. Because that is exactly my job — turning new ideas into photographs, film and content. And for anyone who wants it, I refresh their own site, with the same eye I have for pictures and a strong technical partner behind me.»
At weddings you can be almost invisible — and then you have to line up 130 guests for a group photo. How does that fit together?
«That is not a contradiction, it is the job in two gears. In reportage I am close without being noticed and take the real moments — the shaking before the «I do», the look on the mother’s face. And when the group photo comes round I can be very noticeable indeed: I pull the attention onto my camera with a bit of cheerful talk — for one person, a couple, a family, or 130 people arranged in no time. Recently at a company event I photographed over 90 changing groups in one evening. It has to move fast, be fun, and produce good pictures.»
What do your clients value most about you?
«Several things. But the one I hear most often is always the same: that I get the right mood going on set, one where even a set-up picture feels real. I talk to people until the laugh is right — then the pose is only the frame, the feeling is real. It works the same way on film: people who have never acted suddenly play a part without effort, because they do not feel watched. Clients tell me that again and again.»
And when a company says: «our place is not photogenic»?
«Then I say: that is exactly why I am coming. Workshops, laboratories, building sites — that is where the honest, strong pictures come from, the ones that stand apart from any stock photo. People doing real work are never unphotogenic. And at a time when everybody recognises the AI gloss, the real thing is the best advertising there is: I make you visible — with what is actually there.»
Happy with the visibility?
«Film and photography are not a beauty contest. I work with what I find, what raises interest, what draws you in. I turn that into pictures and tell a story with it that speaks to people. That, to me, is visibility.»
1500+

Sessions & reportage

150m²

Studio in Zwingen, since 2003

3+

decades in the profession

3

Languages: German, English, French

1–2

Days to the application photo

10–14

Working days to the wedding reportage