Photographic Encounters

With the biennial format Photographic Encounters Fotomuseum Winterthur and Christoph Merian Verlag accompany a photographer/artist in the realisation of an exhibition and a publication.

In June 2021 some 50 photographers were nominated by ten curators, critics and artists and invited to submit a dossier and an outline proposal for a photographic project. The Photographic Encounters format is intended to support photographers from Switzerland or domiciled in Switzerland and enable them to present a long-term photographic project. The 2021 jury – which consists of two external guests (Kabelo Malatsie, the new director of Kunsthalle Bern, and freelance curator Yasmin Afschar), Oliver Bolanz, representing Christoph Merian Verlag, and Nadine Wietlisbach, director of Fotomuseum Winterthur – have selected a photographer: the Italian Senegalese artist Adji Dieye (b. 1991). She will work closely with the museum and the publisher over a period of around twelve months to realise an exhibition and publication. The publication is intended to offer new ways of looking at their series of images.

The key criteria for the Photographic Encounters format are the project’s artistic and conceptual approach, its contemporary relevance and the quality of the photographic imagery. The title Photographic Encounters draws on the ideas of theorist Ariella Azoulay, who describes photography as a practice composed of multiple encounters. These take place not only between the photographer and their subject(s) but also, further down the line, between the viewer and the photograph. The repeated process of looking at a picture and discussing it from different angles also opens up its scope of influence. Accordingly, events that took place at one time in front of the camera are carried on through the act of reception and recontextualisation.

Nominated Photographers 2022–2023

Akosua Viktoria Adu-Sanyah, Zoé Aubry, James Bantone, Alexandra Baumgartner, Mauren Brodbeck, Marie José Burki, Céline Burnand, Finn Curry, Aline D’Auria, Alexandra Dautel, De La Fuente Oscar De Franco, Nicolas Delaroche, Adji Dieye, David Favrod, Marco Frauchiger, Matthieu Gafsou, David Gagnebin-de Bons, Cécile Hummel, Damien Juillard, Camille Kaiser, Léonie Rose Marion, Michael Meier & Rico Scagliola, Anastasia Mityukova, Noha Mokhtar, Anne Morgenstern, Simone C. Niquille, Christoph Oeschger, Virginie Otth, Alexandra Pfammatter, Flurina Rothenberger, Guadalupe Ruiz, Hayahisa Tomiyasu, Oraib Toukan, Tara Ulmann, Alicia Velazquez, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Jiajia Zhang

The Photographic Encounters format was initiated by the Christoph Merian Foundation, enabled by the Geissmann Scholarship for Photography.