Fotomuseum Winterthur | Saturday, 20.01. – Sunday, 17.03.1996

The Magic of Images

During the last thirty years a surprisingly rich tradition has developed in Switzerland: Photographers and artists have carried out image research, image games, image celebrations: They have tested images, spoken and played with them – and they have celebrated images. At the beginning, this research and playing occured mostly with the medium drawing; from the middle of the 1970’s increasingly in photography.

The exhibition and catalogue show four positions from the late 70’s and ten from the 90’s: The photography stands within a range from documentary representation to autonomous image; it struggles with the pictorialism of a language which has become a logo; it is taken from the area of printed images, chosen and re-worked. Sometimes the images are so brilliant that one forgets the print, sometimes the print itself is so present that it influences the image. Today this research need no longer be serious, it can be opulent, funny, it can become a – serious – game. The image – from time immemorial modeled after nature, after the world and still lively, independent – becomes a metaphor of life.

With Ian Anüll, Martin Blum, Daniele Buetti, Fischli/Weiss, Rémy Markowitsch, Gérald Minkoff, Markus Raetz, Hannes Rickli, Christoph Rütimann, Adrian Schiess, Laurent Schmid, Hugo Suter, Bernard Voïta, and Cécile Wick.

The exhibition was curated by Urs Stahel.