The exhibition presents the city of Zurich and its people as they lived and worked during the tumultuous times between 1967 and 1976, when youthful rebellion and sexual revolution confronted bourgeois morality and order. The two photographers Willy Spiller and Fred Mayer will exhibit some of their best-known works at Bildhalle, images that are visually intense, absurd and a witty testimony to the zeitgeist of that time.Willy Spiller has become well known as a photojournalist far beyond Switzerland. In his unmistakable artistic style and with his precise eye, he has photographed Swiss and international celebrities in historically eventful years, amongst them people like Alfred Hitchcock, Paul Nizon, Federico Fellini, Hildegard Schwaninger, Lady Shiva, Walter Pfeiffer and David Weiss.
Fred Mayer shows vintage prints from his three-part series «Zürcher Panoptikum», originally published in the weekend edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1972, accompanied by a text by Hugo Loetscher. Whether publishers, artists, street sweepers or loiterers, they all appeared in front of Mayer`s camera. Following the principle of US photographer Irving Penn, Fred Mayer did not portray his protagonists posing within their familiar milieu, but rather with their guard down against a neutral background in his studio. The resulting portraits of around 90 Zurich residents are intimate and timeless, and include celebrities such as Ueli Prager, Max Bill, Hugo Lötscher, Sigmund Widmer and the painter Varlin.
