Press

The Board of Trustees of Fotomuseum Winterthur has appointed Sophie Haslinger as the new Director following an extensive selection process. She will assume her role on 1 August 2026. She succeeds Nadine Wietlisbach, who has led and significantly shaped the institution since 2018 and will assume the position of Head of Cultural Promotion at the Federation of Migros Cooperatives (FMC) in early summer 2026.

We will be showing five exhibitions in 2026: Paul Mpagi Sepuya – Focus. Desire., Ester Vonplon – Wingbeat, Shadow Creatures – From Spirit Photography to the Ghosts of the Algorithm, One Another – Nhu Xuan Hua and the Collection of Fotomuseum Winterthur and Helen Levitt.

Spectral beings haunt digital images: algorithmic figures lurk in photorealistic computer games, enigmatic beings nest in datasets, and ghostly figures surface through AI prompts. Shadow Creatures shifts the focus from photography as a medium of light to shadows. The exhibition spans historical spirit photography and the algorithmic phantoms of the present, showing how images summon beings that inhabit our personal, social and political unconscious.

With the second edition of One Another, Fotomuseum Winterthur continues its dialogue between the collection and contemporary artists. The French-Vietnamese photographer Nhu Xuan Hua (*1989) engages with works from the collection. In her multidisciplinary practice Nhu Xuan Hua delves into the construction of memory, the feeling of uprootedness and the legacy of the diaspora.

Fotomuseum Winterthur is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to photographer Helen Levitt (1913–2009), featuring works from her archive, which has only recently become accessible to the public. At the heart of the exhibition is her poetic view of New York street life: spontaneous gestures, children at play, fleeting encounters and the small scenes of everyday life.

‘Switzerland is fake’, claims a witty video by AI expert Karpi (Patrick Karpiczenko) that is going viral on the internet. As Nadine Wietlisbach, director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Karpi explained in a joint statement, the initiative is intended as an invitation, calling on us to engage more critically with the images we encounter online. Reopening on 17 May 2025 after nearly two years of renovation work, the museum will once again give visitors the opportunity to do just this.

The demands placed on contemporary museums have changed in recent years and decades, as have visitor requirements. The new Fotomuseum Winterthur will cater to these changing conditions and realise the vision of a modern-day institution.