In today’s episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Jens Krauer, a Switzerland-based street and documentary photographer whose work explores the rhythm, tension, and quiet complexity of everyday life in public space.
You can listen to this interview using our podcast player below, but we strongly encourage you to subscribe to the podcast in your podcast app so that you don’t miss any future show episodes.
Jens Krauer is a Zurich-based street and documentary photographer whose work is rooted in close observation of urban life. Working in cities such as Zurich, New York, Paris, Istanbul, Kyiv, and beyond, he is drawn to the small, unscripted moments in which human presence, gesture, and emotion briefly come to the surface.
His photographs often move between candid street encounters and a more intimate form of visual storytelling. Rather than simply recording what happens in public space, he looks for the tension, vulnerability, and quiet poetry hidden inside everyday situations.
Over the years, his work has become recognized for its patience, empathy, and strong black-and-white language. Through his long-term street photography practice, he invites viewers to slow down and notice the complex human stories unfolding in plain sight around us.
JENS KRAUER
Subscribe to FRAMES Photography Podcast.
FRAMES is a unique international photography community that combines the best of all worlds, bringing you print and digital publications, a global membership platform, access to live events, and a dedicated mobile application.
EXPAND YOUR PHOTOGRAPHIC VISION
JOIN FRAMES TODAY
Ruggero Pellegrin
June 6, 2026 at 18:15
Jens’s conversion to black and white hit me — not as a style decision but as an act of discipline, a way of testing whether the picture holds without the distraction of colour. And the two years of shooting for nobody but himself: that kind of silence takes courage, but it’s probably where the real voice gets built.
The transparency point is the one I’ll carry longest. Declaring your mission rather than concealing it. Not stealing but explaining, if needed. That shift in posture changes everything about the relationship between photographer and subject. And it’s precisely that declared intention, I think, that separates observation from mere documentation. It is also one of the ingredients that make his pictures, albeit candid, close to the subject.