Schweizer Fotografie der 1930er Jahre – Bilderstreit

5. Juni bis 25. Oktober 2009

The Swiss National Museum – Château de Prangins hosts an exhibition that was organised by the Swiss Foundation for Photography in Winterthur. It focuses on a controversy that shook up the world of photography in Switzerland in the 1930s. This dispute pitted the pictorialists, who favoured photography inspired largely by pictorial tradition, against the followers of a new form of photography that was more instantaneous and incisive, and better able to depict the rapid changes that were taking place in society at the time. The exhibition showcases a striking visual confrontation between the photographs of the pictorialists and those of the modernists. The pictorialist images by Fred Boissonnas, Emile Gos or Francis de Jongh are intentionally out of focus and soft, carefully retouched and stick to conventional composition. The modern pictures by photographers including Binia Bill, Hans Finsler, Germaine Martin and Gotthard Schuh are striking with their razor sharpness, their luminous intensity at times almost blinding and their bold composition. Beyond the aesthetic concerns at stake, this exhibition, featuring some 120 photographs and documents, also provides an unexpected look at Switzerland during the

interwar years.