SITUATION #131

With his pinhole aperture patterns of the 1960s, René Mächler pursued a path that defied the prevailing conventions of photography. His works did not portray people or objects, but instead produced structures created with the aid of a perforated surface area. When the light shines through it, a uniform pattern is inscribed on the light-sensitive paper. The result may be seen as a departure from subjectivity and as an objectification of the photographic process, culminating in the concretisation of the photographic medium – light and paper. In 1968 the term “generative photography” was coined to describe this form of image production. Mächler is widely regarded as the leading proponent of this approach in Switzerland. The works shown here follow this operationalised regulatory system and thus stand on the threshold of an emerging computer aesthetic.