Appointments
2025
Jurabilder / Imaginaires du Jura
Exhibition co-curated with Katrin Steffen, Director Kunstmuseum Solothurn (kunstmuseum-so.ch), Marianne Burki, curator, and Markus Schürpf, Head fotoCH (foto-ch.ch).
Switzerland’s landscape has inspired filmmakers from all over the world. The panorama of the Alps has served as a backdrop in numerous film productions and has defined the image of our country. What is less well known is that the Jura mountains were and still are a popular filming location. Beyond the postcard Switzerland, filmmakers find an authentic and at the same time mysterious terrain for their stories here. The 60th Solothurn Film Festival (solothurnerfilmtage.ch) is exploring this cinematic space with a special program. In cooperation with the Film Days, the Solothurn Art Museum is also embarking on a search for clues along the Jura Arc. The geologically young folded mountains will be explored in terms of their impact on culture, society and industrial history. An exhibition that starts in the 18th century and leads up to the present day tells the story of how people have been shaped by the landscape – and vice versa.
In the exhibition at the Solothurn Art Museum (19 January – 4 May 2025), the Jura is explored in paintings, photographs and installations in a historically researched exhibition: what role did the Jura play in painting and what image of the landscape is portrayed in it? What significance is attached to the industrial development of the region in art and photography? The exhibition tells selected historical stories of a (cultural) landscape off the beaten track and traces the Jura’s DNA in the present.
Among the contributing photographers and archives are Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892) with the daguerreotypes taken during a voyage pittoresque in 1840/1850, Auguste (1801-1882) and Edouard (1835-1888) Quiquerez with their saltpaper images of cultural monuments and landscapes, the postal worker-turned photographer Eugène Cattin with his study Les Gens de Bois et au-delà (1892-1932), the Deriaz-Dynasty of Baulmes, the collective mission launched by the Swiss government to document the border forticfications during World War, drawn from the Swiss National Archives, as well as the photographers documenting mining, production and produces by the von-Roll ironworks in the various Jura gorges. There are the Infrared experiments by Hans Finsler (1891-1972), watchmaking photographs by Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) and Monique Jacot (1934-2024). The younger generation includes, among others, Jaques Belat (1952), Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010), Jeanne Chevalier (1944), Olga Caviero (1982) and Christian Schwager (1966). Among objects on display are albums documenting the the earliest railroad construction in the Jura and of troops dispatched to guard the borders during both World Wars and photographich postcards depicting damage caused by bombing raids on Swiss border towns. Press photographers covered refugees during and foreign troops crossing into Switzerland – exactly as Edourad Castres depicted the remnants of the Bourbaki Army a.k.a. as the Armée de l’Est duirng the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). The dialogue between photography and art is the hallmark of the exhibition, with works by Cuno Amiet, Gustave Courbet, Ferdinand Hodler, Charles Eplattenier, Meret Oppenheim, Karl Walser and Caspar Wolf among others.
2004–2006
Jean-Pascal Imsand–Photographer
Management on behalf of the Fondation Jean-Pascal Imsand of the travelling retrospective curated and produced by Fotostiftung Schweiz, Musée de l’Elysée and Galleria Gottardo.
Published by Lars Müller Verlag, 2004.
The Fondation Jean-Pascal Imsand was founded in 2000 upon an initiative by Daniel Schwartz. After having completed its mission in 2018, the National Supervisory Authority granted the foundation’s request for its liquidation together with handover of the complete estate to the Fotostiftung Schweiz (Swiss Foundation for Photography).
2003–2006
Tales from a Globalizing World
Geschichten von der Globalisierung
Récits d’une Mondialisation
Travelling exhibition conceived, curated and produced for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
Published by Thames & Hudson and Steidl, 2003.
Contributing photographers: Akinbode Akinbiyi: Black Atlantic Divinities. Nigeria and Brazil, Lagos and Brasilia: Migrant Gods and Returnees. Ziyo Gafic: Quest for Identity. Bosnia-Herzegovina: Recovery from War. Tim Hetherington: Healing Sport. Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kenya: Ways Out. Philip Jones-Griffiths: Independence and Transition. Vietnam: Values old and new. Thomas Kern: Homeland of Globalization. USA: From Detroit to the Mexican Border. Shehzaad Noorani: Childhood Denied. Nepal, India, Bangladesh: The Struggle to Survive. Cristina Nunez: Made in Italy. Milan and Naples: Parallel Worlds of Fashion. Andreas Seibert: Somewhere from Nowhere. China, Pearl River Delta: 21st-century Megalopolis. Bertien van Manen: Paradise in Boxes. France: Immigrants in the Paris Suburbs. Stephan Vanfleteren: Facing Stories. Belgium: The Poverty of Loneliness.
www.un.org
www.todayartmuseum.com
Explore view: ewz-Unterwerk Selnau, Zürich 2004
Explore view: Maison communale de Plainpalais, Genève 2003
2001–2004
Borders and Beyond – Au-delà des Frontières
Travelling exhibition conceived, curated and produced for Pro Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland.
Published by Rotpunktverlag, 2001.
Contributing photographers: Manuel Bauer: Tibet. Escape into Exile, 1995. Jodi Bieber: South Africa-Mozambique. Illegality and Repatriation, 2000. Julian Cardona: Mexico-USA. La Frontera, 2000. Thomas Kern: San Francisco, Chinatown. This Land is Our Land, 2000. Joachim Ladefoged: At Home in Kosovo, 1999–2000. Don McCullin: Cyprus. Civil War 1964 (The historical reportage). Valeri Nistratov: Transdniestria. Border Territory as a State, 2000. Meinrad Schade: Switzerland. Country of Asylum/Country of Transit 1998–2000. Randa Shaath: Palestine. Home as a Prison, 2000. Roger Wehrli: Gibraltar. Threshold of Fortress Europe 2000.
1997
Mémoires du Vietnam
Exhibition curated for the first edition of the Biel Photo Days (Journées photographiques de Bienne) and Photoforum Pasquart, Biel-Bienne, Switzerland.
Based on the editorial contribution for DU, 674, Juli–August 1997.
Contributing photographers: Don McCullin, Philp Jones Griffiths, Tim Page, Daniel Schwartz, as well as the Vietnam People’s Army/Vietnam News Agency Photographers.
1996
Facing Death
Exhibition arranged for the Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich.
Based on the editorial contribution to Photographers International, 19, Taipei 1995.
Comprising one hundred ID portraits provided by The Photo Archive Group founded by Doug Niven and Chris Riley, who cleaned, catalogued, and printed the negatives from S-21, a.k.a. The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide, Phnom Penh.
1995–2002
So Many Worlds
Travelling exhibition conceived, curated, and produced with Dieter Bachmann, editor-in-chief of DU magazine (1988-1998).
Based on the great visual legacy of DU magazine (est. 1941), this collection of 255 images by photographers from Werner Bischof to Shomei Tomatsu, from Gisèle Freund to Donna Ferrato distills the story of humanity’s past fifty years.
Published under the titles Der Geduldige Planet, So Many Worlds, and Temps d’humanité by DU-Verlag, Thames & Hudson, and Edition de la Martinière, 1996.
Explore views: From the making-of, former Zahnräder Maag AG, Zürich 1994
Explore views: «Cierpliwosc Planety», Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow 1997
