A world-renowned photo art museum and collection

• Fotomuseum Winterthur located in Zurich was founded in 1993 and is dedicated to photography as art form and document, and as a representation of reality. It’s, on the one hand, an art gallery for photography by contemporary photographers and artists (with exhibitions by Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Roni Horn, Boris Mikhailov and many others). On the other, it’s a traditional museum for works by 19th and 20th century masters (Karl Blossfeldt, Bill Brandt, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Edward Weston, Weegee and others).

• Also, it serves as a cultural-historical, sociological museum of applied photography in the fields of industry, architecture, fashion, etc. (shows on police photography, industrial photography, dam-construction photography,etc.). These three orientations form the basis of the museum's exhibition program and accompanying publications and events.

• Together with Fotostiftung Schweiz, Fotomuseum Winterthur has been running a Center of Photography since autumn of 2003, with a bistro, a library, seminar rooms, a lounge, and a shop. On the new expanded premises, and in addition to the changing exhibitions, it presents changing shows of works from its collection of contemporary photography, including work by Nobuyoshi Araki, Vanessa Beecroft, Lewis Baltz, Daniele Buetti, Larry Clark, Hans Danuser, William Eggleston, Nicolas Faure, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Paul Graham, Boris Mikhailov, Thomas Ruff, and Annelies Štrba.

• Since the foundation of Fotomuseum Winterthur in 1993, building up a collection of contemporary photography has been a major cornerstone of the museum's activities. To date, some 4000 photographs have been purchased, donated or given on permanent loan. Every year since 2003, parts of the collection are presented in specially curated exhibitions accompanied by a series of publications.

• The online collection now provides a further opportunity of making the ever-growing holdings readily accessible to a broader international audience. The works presented online as publicly accessible reproductions are copyright protected. Users can explore the ideas and working methods of some 300 individual photographers by browsing the index of artists and titles, or using the full-text search facility to find information about the artists and their techniques and to read commentated descriptions of the works in the collection.