SalzburgBilder
Anna Aicher, Sebastian Albert, Motahar Amiri, Valentin Backhaus, Katrin Froschauer, Mitzi Gugg, Kurt Kaindl, Reinhart Mlineritsch, Andrew Phelps, Stefanie Pirker, Birgit Sattlecker, Peter Schreiner, Herman Seidl, Nadine Weixler, Elisabeth Wörndl
Photo Archives of the Salzburg Freilichtmuseum as a Source of Contemporary Photography
As part of the “40 years of FOTOHOF“ anniversary, fifteen photo artists from the FOTOHOF’s inner circle have taken a closer look at two picture archives owned by the Salzburg Open-Air Museum. The resulting works provide a comprehensive view of Salzburg and a contemporary artistic use of the medium of photography. The source material consists of two extensive collections of historical pictures featuring a total of appr. 11,400 photos that look at historical rural culture, its ways of life and work practices − and especially how they become inscribed in the region’s buildings. One collection dates back to Kurt Conrad, the founder and first director of the Open-Air Museum; the other, to Bruno Kerschner, Salzburg’s very own “photographer of landscapes, trade, and industry“.
At the initiative of Michael Weese, acting director of the Open-Air Museum, and under the curatorship of Rainer Iglar and Michael Mauracher, this photographic material has provided the source of inspiration for the photographers’ projects.
The topical photographic works reflect the thematic modules of these two Salzburg photo archives: the home and its fixtures and furnishings, farmhouse typologies, settlement and landscape forms, peasant and artisanal work, industry, customs, and the alpine region itself.
Reinhart Mlineritsch presents his long-term documentation of one particular family; the works by Andrew Phelps, Sebastian Albert and Nadine Weixler are dedicated to urban developments, in particular single-family houses and village centres; Katrin Froschauer and Valentin Backhaus have cast their artistic gaze on places of democratic municipality politics; the photographs that Birgit Sattlecker took along the Tauern motorway explore our longing for unconstrained mobility; Mitzi Gugg, Stefanie Pirker, and Motahar Amiri have documented modern-day farming life just beyond the city boundaries;
Kurt Kaindl and Herman Seidl feature industrial enterprises and their employees; Anna Aicher has photographed young people within the context of groups nurturing traditional customs; Elisabeth Wörndl looks at mystical experiences of nature in the Hohe Tauern in her tableau-like groups of works; and Peter Schreiner focuses on the image politics of these photographs by reworking the archive material and rearranging it into new and creepy visions of such images.
On display in the FOTOHOF>LIBRARY are slide shows with selected pictures from photo archives of Kurt Conrad and Bruno Kerschner.
A comprehensive book will be published to accompany the exhibition:
SalzburgBilder
with texts by Michael Weese, Rainer Iglar, Michael Mauracher. German. Design: Studio Fjeld. 2021, Softcover, stitched binding. 30×24 cm, 136 pages. ISBN 978-3-903334-24-3
