Fotomuseum Winterthur

Since 2003, when it expanded to mark its tenth anniversary, the Fotomuseum Winterthur has been one of the largest centres for photography in Europe. The museum's exhibitions and publications enjoy an excellent reputation worldwide.

 

The Fotomuseum Winterthur has hosted over one hundred exhibitions since its founding in 1993, dedicating itself to the medium of photography but also exploring how this intersects with other mechanical and electronic media for representing images. The museum allows the general public to enjoy photography and get to know photographers. It offers exhibitions, publications, guided tours, lectures and conferences, but also carries out research and helps to shape trends. The ever-growing private collection of the Fotomuseum can now also be viewed online.

 

 

 

The Fotomuseum aims to show photography in its full spectrum of contemporary expression – as a place in which society can see and gain insight into the issues it confronts every day. In today's world, images in their multiple shapes, forms and distribution channels are omnipresent and have acquired a status that is equal – if not superior – to words as a form of communication. Clearly, photography is a medium that everyone relates to in one form or another. The six to eight exhibititions the Fotomuseum hosts each year are based on a dual understanding of photography: as art and as a documentation of reality. 

 

 

 

In 2008, Swiss Re is sponsoring "Jedermann Collection – Set 5", an exhibition which features 177 works. The list of artists represented in the collection reads like a "who is who" of contemporary art and photography. The 2006 purchase of the set enriched the Fotomuseum's collection of conceptual photography between 1960 and 2000 and bolstered its contemporary art holdings significantly.

The main section of the "Jedermann Collection" focuses on conceptual photography in the 1960s an ’70s, including seminal works by John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Sigmar Polke, to name but a few. A subsection focuses on reflective, postmodern photography in the 1980s, including works by Sherri Levine, Cindy Sherman, Hirsch Perlmann, Elaine Sturtevant and many others.

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