Fotomuseum Winterthur | Events | Saturday, 05.06.2021, 16:00–17:00
Artist Talk with Dorothée Elisa Baumann
Dorothée Elisa Baumann, Take a Better Picture, 2018 © Dorothée Elisa Baumann
In conversation with Katrin Bauer, assistant curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur, the artist will provide insights into her work on a tour through the exhibition.
For Dorothée Elisa Baumann (b. 1972), the camera is not a neutral object: as soon as it is around, the encounter between people and their gazes can no longer take place on a level playing field. In the exhibition, the Swiss photographer goes one step further by likening the camera to a weapon that visualises hierarchies between subject and object. The power structures that go together with this are reinforced by technological advances: the faster or more easily a picture can be taken, the less need there is to deal with the reality of life on the other side of the lens. In her video work Take a Better Picture (2018), Baumann enacts this with a hammer, which she uses to hit the shutter release of a camera. This represents an appeal for photography to play by new rules that will break up the hierarchy between the photographing subject and the photographed object and enable empathic collaboration to take place on equal terms.
The exhibition How to Win at Photography explores the relationship between photography and play through a wide array of contemporary and 20th century works. It creates unexpected connections between the history of photography, the gamification of the visible and the practices of image-making with and within computer games.
The event takes place in German.
Admission: admission to the exhibition (CHF 12.–/10.– (reduced))
For members: free admission
For Dorothée Elisa Baumann (b. 1972), the camera is not a neutral object: as soon as it is around, the encounter between people and their gazes can no longer take place on a level playing field. In the exhibition, the Swiss photographer goes one step further by likening the camera to a weapon that visualises hierarchies between subject and object. The power structures that go together with this are reinforced by technological advances: the faster or more easily a picture can be taken, the less need there is to deal with the reality of life on the other side of the lens. In her video work Take a Better Picture (2018), Baumann enacts this with a hammer, which she uses to hit the shutter release of a camera. This represents an appeal for photography to play by new rules that will break up the hierarchy between the photographing subject and the photographed object and enable empathic collaboration to take place on equal terms.
The exhibition How to Win at Photography explores the relationship between photography and play through a wide array of contemporary and 20th century works. It creates unexpected connections between the history of photography, the gamification of the visible and the practices of image-making with and within computer games.
The event takes place in German.
Admission: admission to the exhibition (CHF 12.–/10.– (reduced))
For members: free admission