Davos is a five-hour drive from Geneva. I live in a small country, but some places seem so far away as to be almost unreachable.

January 2012. I hadn’t set foot in Davos for fifteen years, and here I was, an official photographer for the World Economic Forum, one of the most newsworthy political meetings in the world. I was going to have an all-access pass and the carte blanche to capture the atmosphere of the event.

I photograph the unknown. It’s my raw material. When I’m on assignment , I only know of necessary minimum. I let myself be guided by what passes before my lens. During my week at Davos, I was only very rarely prevented from shooting. This photographic essay is a personal selection that offers one vision of the WEF. No opinion was intended.

Sometimes photographs are simply graphic. Others raise more incisive questions. This set of photographs serves as an alternative to the press photographs taken over the course of this week.

Enrique Pardo