Meteor Ghosts
In Meteor Ghosts, photographer Florian Luthi revisits a little-known 1954 UFO case in the Jura, tracing how a children’s story evolved into local folklore and international sensation. Blending archival research, documentary photography, and staged imagery, the project explores the fragile space between testimony and invention across the mist-covered landscapes of the French-Swiss border.
Photography Florian Luthi
Meteor Ghosts explores the shifting boundary between reality, memory, and myth. The project draws from the wave of UFO sightings that swept across France in 1954, particularly along the French-Swiss border. Newspapers at the time reported strange lights, apparitions, and mysterious encounters that often left behind little more than fear and speculation.
One of the most emblematic stories comes from the small village of Prémanon, where four children, including Raymond Romand, claimed to have witnessed a glowing object landing near their home. Romand described it as a ‘large sugar cube on three legs’, emitting a paralysing cold. Though traces were reportedly found on the ground, the story was later revealed to have originated as a school assignment—an essay their teacher had asked them to write. Yet by the time this was known, the tale had already entered local folklore.
“Returning to these landscapes of my childhood, the misty forests, abandoned villages, and quiet Jura, I construct a photographic narrative where truth wavers and past stories linger.”
Florian Luthi
This case attracted considerable media attention at the time, eventually reaching the United States and taking on the proportions of a Hollywood action film. As more articles appeared, the story grew increasingly sensational: the ghost the children claimed to have seen gradually transformed into a flying saucer, then into an alien with whom they supposedly fought in front of the farmhouse.
Returning to these landscapes of my childhood, the misty forests, abandoned villages, and quiet Jura, I construct a photographic narrative where truth wavers and past stories linger. The project takes the form of a photographic investigation of the border area. Each passage reveals a ghostly landscape, scattered with increasingly faint traces of human presence. It almost feels like a ‘no man’s land’ unfolding between the two countries. There is something reminiscent of deep America, with surprising architectural details: motels along isolated roads, and these starkly defined landscapes.
Using archival materials, re-enactments, and documentary images, I blur the line between fact and fiction. By merging historical events with my own interpretations, I turn the Jura Mountains into a stage where memory, myth, and landscape collide. This series invites the viewer to navigate the fragile terrain of perception and to question what lies beyond the visible.
“With the benefit of hindsight, I think I went through an interesting experience. One of the lessons is seeing how information can be distorted. What sometimes makes me sceptical about what I read and see is how, from absolutely nothing, a legend can be created.”
Raymond Romand
About Florian
Florian Luthi (b. 1988, Switzerland) is a Geneva-based photographer and visual artist. His work explores how images construct narratives and shape our perception of reality. Often starting from a news item, an anecdote, or a fragment of history, his projects unfold as visual narratives in which the boundary between documentation and fiction remains deliberately unstable.
Informed by a cinematic sensibility, his practice pays close attention to framing, sequencing, and narrative tension. Landscapes, architectures, and human figures become elements of a restrained dramaturgy, where suggestion prevails over resolution. By avoiding fixed meanings, his images open a space for interpretation, inviting viewers to navigate between projection and doubt.
Florian Luthi graduated from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (écal) in 2012 and holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice (Moving Image) from the Royal College of Art, London (2019). His work has been exhibited at the Benaki Museum as part of the Athens Photo Festival (2017), at the Photoforum Pasquart Prize in Biel/Bienne (2013, 2017), and at the Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival (2019). He has also received the Kiefer Hablitzel Award during the Swiss Art Awards in 2014. His recent project Meteor Ghosts will be presented at the Centre de la photographie Genève in summer 2026
To see more of his work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram
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