On Horizons - Set 8 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur
Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland
Curator: Thomas Seelig
Through May 20, 2012
The photographic gaze into the horizon is a mirror for internal and external states and produces artistic interpretations and commentaries. As in other artistic genres, landscape in photography is interpreted through political and private gazes and the results go far beyond purely aesthetic experiences. Assembled from the collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur, this exhibition shows how photographers since the mid-1960s have approached their imagery from a range of analytical and emotional standpoints.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1958
Silbergelatine-Abzug, 21,5 x 32 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Estate of Garry Winogrand / Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1958. This amazing photograph by Garry Winogrand is part of the exhibition organized by the Swiss museum dedicaced to the photography in Winterthur, near Zurich.
Also on view, 1970s B&W and color photographs by renowed photographers Luigi Ghirri, Shomei Tomatsu, Guido Guidi and Robert Häusser.
Salisburgo (Salzburg), 1977
C-Print, 23,8 x 35,5 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Estate of Luigi Ghirri
This photograph by Luigi Ghirri is from “Diaframma 11, 1/125 luce naturale” Aperture 11, 1/125 second shutter speed with natural day light. The exhibition also features Luigi Ghirri’s pictures from “Kodakrome” (1973).
Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970
C-Print, 20,5 x 29,7 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
Acquired with funds from Canon (Schweiz) AG
© Shomei Tomatsu
Fosso Ghiaia, 1972
Silbergelatine-Abzug, 17,3 x 17,3 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Schenkung Thomas Koerfer
© Guido Guidi
Relative Orientierungen, Relative orientations, 1972
Gelatin-silver print, 41 x 57 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Gift of Robert Häusser
© Robert Häusser / FIP / Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum
Exploring unknown locations provides the creative impulse for works by three Swiss photographers Balthasar Burkhard, Reto Camenisch, and Jan Jedlicka, who express their visions in monumental individual images or in series of small-scale works.
Chlönthal, 2002
Triptych Gelatin-silver prints, 244 x 306 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Gift of Volkart Foundation
© Estate of Balthasar Burkhard
Lewis Baltz is a participant of the famous exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, which in 1975 first addressed the man-created interface between civilization and nature.
Aus: Continuous Fire Polar Circle, 1986
Gelatin-silver print, 20,2 x 25,4 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Dauerleihgabe Lewis Baltz
© Lewis Baltz
Time for looking and contemplation is the central element of Himmel [Heaven], an eighty-one image slide show by weather phenomenologist Andreas Züst. Accordingly, it shares a close bond with the hi-gloss digital video Highlights II by Dominik Hodel as well as the publication LA AIR by Bruce Nauman, which presents sunsets over Los Angeles juxtaposed with minimalist color studies.
From: Sky, 1990-2000
Slide show in 81 parts
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Estate of Andreas Züst
Headlights II, 2010
Full-HD Videoloop 2.45 min.
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Dominik Hodel
When Christian Schwager photographs almost innocent-looking meadows and forests in Bosnia some ten years after the civil war, the unhealed wounds, the hidden signs of violence, disturb us. Pictures of landscapes are never neutral, the exacting gaze of the photographs anchor them in a particular zeitgeist and open up additional levels of meaning.
When Robert Frank seeks visual answers to elementary questions of life in the sparse surroundings of his house in Nova Scotia (Canada), circling about his direct environment again and again, landscape becomes a projection screen for yearnings and remembrances.
For Andrea 1954-1974, Mabou, 1975
Gelatin-silver print, 49,6 x 39,8 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, Gift of George Reinhart
© Robert Frank
Also on view a triptych by the landscape photographer Axel Hütte. His last book, Towards the Woods, was published in september 2010 by Schirmer/Mosel (in english).
Furka, Schweiz, 1995
2 C-Prints, each 205 x 162 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
© Axel Hütte
With works by the following artists : Caroline Bachmann / Stefan Banz, Lewis Baltz, Balthasar Burkhard, Reto Camenisch, Gintaras Didziapetris, Dick Duyves, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Peter Fischli/David Weiss, Thomas Flechtner, Robert Frank, Dunja Evers, Luigi Ghirri, John Gossage, Guido Guidi, Robert Häusser, Dominik Hodel, Roni Horn, Axel Hütte, Jan Jedlicka, Claudio Moser, Bruce Nauman, Igor Savchenko, Christian Schwager, Yoshiko Seino, Shomei Tomatsu, Garry Winogrand, and Andreas Züst.
The exhibition is organized by THOMAS SEELIG, curator of the collection at Fotomuseum Winterthur.
Accompanying the exhibition is, as part of the series of publications on the collection of the Photography Museum Winterthur, a collection brochure with works of the exhibition: On Horizons – Set 8 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur, THOMAS SEELIG (ed.), Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, 2011, 32 pages, numerous color and b/w illustrations, softbound, 24,6 x 20 cm, German / English. With an essay by CHRISTOPH RIBBAT, and texts to the artists. On the cover of the brochure is a detail of the photogaph by Luigi Ghirri taken in Salzburg in 1977.
Alpi – a Film by Armin Linke
Film screening on September 28, 2011 with an introduction by Armin Linke, in conjunction with the exhibition On Horizons. The film Alpi is the result of seven years of research into how the landscapes of the Alps—spanning the borders of eight nations and four languages—are perceived and used. In the film the Alps are portrayed as an island that is subjected to numerous global transformations. The complexity of social, economic, and political relationships within the context of landscape are easily visualized by this centralized and fragile region. The screening has been concluded by a public discussion with Thomas Seelig and Armin Linke. ARMIN LINKE (b. 1966) is an artist who works with photography and film. He lives in Milan and Berlin.
Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland / Suisse
Photography Museum - Musée de la photographie
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
www.fotomuseum.ch
