Exhibitions

JEFFREY CONLEY (*1969, US) is a fine art landscape photographer who specializes in creating traditional black and white prints. His meticulously crafted prints, made utilizing traditional darkroom processes, are made in small and limited editions. His work has been widely exhibited and collected by private collectors and museums worldwide. Two monographs of his work – WINTER, 2011, and REVERENCE, 2018 – have been published by the renowned publisher Nazraeli Press. Conley‘s photographs strive for a balanced simplicity that evoke his sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. Scale and palette vary, from small, intimate and subtle, to large, grand and dramatic. In all he seeks to capture a meditative spirit that uniquely defines his approach to photographing the landscape. He strives to create luminous hand-coated platinum & palladium prints that he feels possess a distinctive richness unique to traditional photographic processes.

PHILIPP KEEL (*1968, CH) is an artist and author as well as the publisher of Diogenes. He studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston and at Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Munich, before moving to California and working in various artistic disciplines. His photographs, paintings, drawings, and prints have since been shown in numerous international exhibitions and are present in leading collections. He became known for his bestselling series All About Me and All About Us (Random House, 1998/2000), for Color (Steidl, 2003) and the series Simple Diary (TASCHEN, 2009). In 2014 Keel’s project State of Mind (Nieves) featuring drawings, watercolors and silkscreens was shown at Villa Flor in S-chanf. In 2017, Steidl published the monography Splash, which presents a selection of Keel’s photographic work from the past years. In 2021, Steidl published the book Last Sommer with a foreword by Benedict Wells. Philipp Keel lives in Zurich.

In AMY FRIEND‘s (*1974, CA) pictures, the ocean is transformed into a memory of past times, brought to life by the artist as delicately scattered, dancing points of light, radiant and motionless at once. To this end, she gives her prints a surprising and particularly weighty materiality: after immersing the prints in seawater, she lays them out to dry for several weeks until the water has completely evaporated, leaving behind a surface covered with crystalline traces of salt.

ALBARRÁN CABRERA’s (*1969, ESP) virtuoso printing techniques – cyanotypes on aluminium plates and pigments on Japan paper over gold leaf – transport us to places of memory and imagination. Their ocean images feature a compelling combination of sensitivity to their craft and nostalgic aesthetics, contributing substantially to the artist duo’s success as contemporary photographers. The sensuous and poetic presence of their ocean images is indebted to the masterful application of relief, colouring and texture in the printing process.

SANDRO DIENER (1975, CH) was born in Zurich, where he still lives and works. Familiar or foreign terrain: in Sandro Diener’s photography everything coalesces in a topography that is both timeless and placeless. Cliff formations are turned into a stage and clouds set a mountain in motion. Stone, grass, light and mist are all parts of a photographic painting. As observers, we have the same experience as the photographer during the act of photography. Photography enables us to take a step back from the world. And the same thing that happens to seafarers happens to us. Land suddenly appears in front of our eyes: familiar, yet with nuances of which we were not previously aware.

THOMAS HOEPKER (*1936, US/DE) studied art history and archeology, then worked as a photographer for Münchner Illustrierte and Kristall between 1960 and 1963, reporting from all over the world. He joined Stern magazine as a photo reporter in 1964. Magnum began to distribute Hoepker‘s archive photographs in 1964. Hoepker worked as art director for Stern in Hamburg between 1987 and 1989, when he became a full member of Magnum. Specializing in reportage and stylish color features, he received the prestigious Kulturpreis of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie in 1968. He was president of Magnum Photos from 2003 to 2006. A retrospective exhibition, showing 230 images from fifty years of work, toured Germany and other parts of Europe in 2007. Today, Hoepker lives in New York.

WERNER BISCHOF (*1916, CH) studied photography with Hans Finsler in his native Zurich at the School for Arts and Crafts, then opened a photography and advertising studio. In 1942 he became a freelancer for Du magazine, which published his first major photo essays in 1943. Bischof received international recognition after the publication of his 1945 reportage on the devastation caused by the Second World War. After trips to Eastern Europe, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, he worked for Picture Post, The Observer, Illustrated and Epoca. He was the first photographer to join Magnum with the founding members in 1949.Disliking the `superficiality and sensationalism` of the magazine business, he devoted much of his working life to looking for order and tranquillity in traditional culture, something that did not endear him to picture editors looking for hot topical material. Nonetheless, he found himself sent to report on famine in India by Life magazine (1951), and he went on to work in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Indochina. The images from these reportages were used in major picture magazines throughout the world. Tragically, Bischof died in a road accident in the Andes on 16 May 1954, only nine days before Magnum founder Robert Capa lost his life in Indochina.

KACPER KOWALSKI (*1977, PO) is an architect and pilot, and has committed himself to flying and photography. As a paraglider, he flies with an engine strapped to his back to discover a world of forms, shapes, and patterns. Constantly fighting with natural forces and taking pictures at an altitude of 150 meters, he finds himself in an almost meditative state, discovering the abstract forms of his natural surroundings. The flight becomes a spiritual journey that reveals universal truths about the relationship between man and nature, about the past and the present.

RENATO D‘AGOSTIN (*1983, IT) started his career in photography in Venice, Italy in 2001. The atmosphere of city life nourished his curiosity to capture life situations with the camera. After a period in Milan, he moved overseas exploring photography in New York. In the dynamic city life he had the chance to meet photographer Ralph Gibson and later on become his assistant. His works have been exhibited in several exhibitions in Europe, United States and Asia and published in numerous books. Dislocating subjects from their realities, he depicts his perception of the space around him, the relationship between the architecture and people, opening a new portal in the spectator’s imagination. After 13 years living and working in New York, D’Agostin in 2018 has returned to his motherland Italy, setting up a studio in a warehouse in the outskirts of Venice.

RACHEL THOMSON (*1965, UK) is a visual artist based at Thistudios in Tottenham London. Her work is inspired by a fascination with mimesis and affected by a concern for loss of biodiversity and climate change. Through drawing, photography, print and sculpture and using natural and waste materials her art explores the challenge that humans pose to the world and to each other.