Untitled, from the series 'Poste mon amour', 2001-2008 © Jean-Luc CramatteJean-Luc Cramatte –
Inventory
3 March – 28 May 2012
Jean-Luc Cramatte has been preoccupied with the notion of the photographic inventory for almost 20 years. Cramatte was born in Porrentruy in 1959 and is an obsessive image maker and collector – with as much interest in his own photographs as in found images. His explorations of the visible world are always based on wilful concepts that draw our attention to the inconspicuous, to what is often overlooked. Cramatte also tends to work in series, investigating the “normality” of life today with a humorous and critical eye, in photographic surveys that provide an instructive ethnography of the everyday. The exhibition at the Fotostiftung Schweiz presents several of Cramatte’s photographic inventories together with a survey of the “Enquête fribourgeoise”, a project co-initiated by Cramatte, for which younger photographers are commissioned to make visual records of Canton Fribourg.
Oktoberfest, Munich 1954 © Kurt Blum / Fotostiftung SchweizKurt Blum –
The Photographic Oeuvre
9 June – 14 October 2012
Kurt Blum, born in Berne in 1922, is one of the outstanding Swiss photographers of the post-war era. Starting in the 1950s, he did numerous reportages for newspapers and magazines, alongside free artistic and experimental works which he also publicised in exhibitions. For example, he took part in the important exhibition “subjective photography” in Saarbrücken in 1951. Blum concentrated mainly on artist portraits (Au milieu des artistes, 1994), work groups on the themes of music, dance and theatre, and in-depth photographic and filmic examinations of industry and labour (Pictures of a Factory, 1959). Although he was awarded the Grand Prix for Photography and Film by Canton Berne in 1983, a comprehensive exhibition of his photographic oeuvre was never mounted during his life-time. The Fotostiftung Schweiz would now like to make up for this with a book and exhibition project, based on a detailed review and scholarly analysis of the Kurt Blum Archive.
Waste water tank of a food factory, Henan Province, 2011 © Andreas SeibertAndreas Seibert –
Huai He
27 October 2012 – 17 February 2013
Following his much-lauded project From Somewhere to Nowhere – China’s Internal Migrants (Lars Müller Publishers, 2008), the Swiss photographer Andreas Seibert, who lives in Tokyo, has focussed on another theme in his examination of everyday life in China today and the challenges it presents. Of major importance here is the 1,000 kilometres long Huai River which Seibert travelled from the source to the estuary mouth. His compelling images document the downside of the current economic boom, reflected in the contamination and pollution of this major lifeline. Seibert’s dedicated reportages speak not just about this drama, but about the dignity of a population striving to cope with the unbound forces of globalisation to which they are exposed.
