‘This Infinite World’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur

'This Infinite World’ courtesy Zurich-based Fotomuseum Winterthur will mark its 10th Set exhibit that captures the museum’s 20-year history in a special way. Renowned photographer from New York, Paul Graham was invited for curating this exclusive 2nd anniversary show that follows ‘Concrete – Photography and Architecture’.

The solo, entitled ‘New Europe’, by the then less-known British photographer was juxtaposed with Fotomuseum Winterthur’s grand opening in 1993. Now the very same Paul Graham, recognized for his photographic achievements almost two decades later with the prestigious Hasselblad Award, has returned as guest curator with a carte blanche. He presents his personal artistic perspective on the 4,000 works that comprise the Fotomuseum Winterthur Collection.

With 21 selected works by artists ranging from Diane Arbus to Bertien van Manen, from Lewis Baltz and Luigi Ghirri to Boris Mikhailov, Graham not only examines the creative process behind photographic works, but also questions the position of the photographer in our infinite world by mentioning: ‘Painters as well as writers confront a void they have to fill with their efforts, summoning from imagination and recollection faces, dialogue, imagery, characters, and even colors. But photography from the world?”

“It seems sometimes we have the opposite, but equally difficult prospect: the world is so full of matter, so brimming with potentially significant moments, objects, people, land, skies, light – all moving, shifting, second by second – that we are burdened with not an empty page, but an overflowing one.”

Meanwhile, the work of American photographer and sociologist Lewis Hine (1874–1940) is also on view at the venue. Hine was adamant in his wish that Americans become aware of the injustice in their nation’s legal system. A firm believer that every human being deserved full respect, he saw photography as the best tool to make this both visible and compelling. To fulfill his mission,

Hine traveled 75,000 km throughout the US, taking photographs of children at work in agriculture, in mines, industrial factories, garment factories, and on the streets. His images not only contributed to a new awareness and the first reforms against child labor. They are also some of the earliest and most important contributions to the genre of social documentary photography. Fotomuseum Winterthur presents this comprehensive retrospective with almost 170 works.