Expanded Horizons: Werner Bischof | Balthasar Burkhard | René Burri | Robert Frank | René Groebli (Press Release)

 

Exhibition poster

This exhibition brings together works by five exceptional Swiss photographers—Werner Bischof (*1916 †1954), Balthasar Burkhard (*1944 †2010), René Burri (*1933 †2014), Robert Frank (*1924) and René Groebli (*1927)—who sought to explore with their cameras the roads, streets and off-the-beaten-paths around the globe and in the process ended up re-shaping their chosen medium as well as our view of the world. Not unlike people who feel the need to cross oceans whenever they stand by the sea, or others who have the urge to climb a peak whenever they gaze up from the foot hills, these photographers growing up in insular Switzerland had to see for themselves the world beyond the quaint and mountain-obstructed vistas. In fact, it was René Burri who once said that he had to leave his home country, because he needed to experience an open, an expanded horizon. The pictures Burri and the other photographers took of the world and reported back to us in newspapers, illustrated magazines or photo books were filled with a radical sense of humanism, a passion for life and people, and with an awareness that even the worst instances captured on film might carry a seed of hope and change-for-the-better within. 

Works by René Groebli and René Burri during installation

It hardly requires mentioning, but these five Swiss artists represent some of the biggest names in international photography today and are tightly intertwined with important art historical markers of the 20^th Century. Their works have grown close to us, and a few of them have even achieved iconic status. Expanded Horizons, however, is less concerned with the extraordinary single images by these photographers rather than topics and series that often reflect their own sense of departure, like René Groebli’s romantic photographs from Magie der Schiene (1949) and Auge der Liebe (1952). In 1951, Werner Bischof travelled for MAGNUM—which he had joined as the first Swiss photographer in 1949—to Japan and India in order to document the everyday lives and hopes of the global post-war generation by portraying two exemplary pairs of young people. Our exhibition presents a wonderful excerpt of this project: the young Japanese fashion designer Michiko. Furthermore, there are René Burri’s profound photographs of Cuba (1963), which recently gained topicality due to the renewal of diplomatic relations between the United States and the socialist Caribbean island. Robert Frank’s images from his series and seminal photo book “The Americans”, of which the exhibition will include five prints, remain equally important and current. All five photographers in this show share an innovative approach to their chosen craft and an almost restless practice. They kept pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a “successful” photograph away from rigid aesthetic parameters and ever more towards new ways of looking at the world.

 

The Fabian & Claude Walter Gallery is proud to present this fine selection of works by the five photographers in an exhibition curated by Daniel Blochwitz, and we look forward to welcome you to the opening reception on August 27^th, 2015, from 5 to 8 pm.

During the opening reception at Fabian & Claude Walter Gallery (Photo: Alessa Widmer / Courtesy Fabian & Claude Walter Gallery, 2016)