Tobias Zielony, Haus der Jugend, 2017 (House of Youth) Filmstill © Tobias Zielony, KOW, Berlin

For over forty years, Camera Austria has been an artists’ run photography space in Graz, a forum for debates, a gallery, a publishing house, an archive, a library, and a platform for workshops and symposia. In this exhibition, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg spotlights Camera Austria’s influence on the Austrian photography scene and the networks and relationships its initiatives have helped foster.

William Eggleston, Sumner, Mississippi, Cassidy Bayou in background, 1971, Dye Transfer, © Eggleston Artistic Trust, Courtesy David Zwirner, New York / London / Hong Kong

William Eggleston, Camera Austria International, Exhibition view © Museum der Moderne Salzburg / Photo Rainer Iglar

One key part of a museum’s mission is to review its collections and shed light on the contexts in which its holdings originated. By examining the activities generated by Camera Austria’s ventures, we trace an important strand in our museum’s history. Since 1981, the Museum der Moderne’s own photography collection and the Austrian Federal Photography Collection, which are focused on fine art photography in Austria, have made Salzburg a photography hub. Many of the altogether 22,000 works in the collections, including ensembles created by Camera Austria’s founders Manfred Willmann and Seiichi Furuya as well as selected works by the numerous artists who contributed to its exhibitions and participated in its symposia, reflect the issues and concerns first raised in Graz.

Joachim Koester, Morning of the Magicians, 2005–2006 © Joachim Koester, Courtesy Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels

Anna and Bernhard Blume, Küchenkoller, 1985/2016 (Kitchen Frenzy), 5 Inkjetprints @ Courtesy the artists and Buchmann Gallery Berlin; Bildrecht, Vienna

The exhibition is organized in eight chapters that present artists associated with Camera Austria in its early years side by side with recent positions. Visual discourses on photography come into view that emerged in the club’s orbit since the 1980s and have lost none of their relevance today. Rather than a retrospective, the show is an opportunity to reconsider aspects of Camera Austria’s history in a contemporary perspective. “Topography & Landscape,” “Image & Identity,” “Living Environment & Representation,” “Composition & Deconstruction,” “Picture & Politics,” “Research & Archive,” “Visual Politics & Science,” and “Privacy & Public Image” are the thematic fields in which dialogues between thirty-nine artists from eleven nations unfold. Audio and video recordings from the symposia organized by Camera Austria set the ideas and art promoted by its activities in Austria and abroad in their larger context.

Lieko Shiga, From the series “Rasen- Kaigan”, 2008–2012 (2018) Chromogenic print © Lieko Shiga

Lieko Shiga, Camera Austria International, Exhibition view © Museum der Moderne Salzburg / Photo Rainer Iglar

Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1986 Chromogenic print © The Estate of Luigi Ghirri

Annette Kelm, From the series Körperüberhänge, 2014, 2 chromogenic prints each Annette Kelm and König Galerie, Berlin / London

The Photographers

Robert Adams, Nobuyoshi Araki, Lewis Baltz, Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber, Anna and Bernhard Blume, Petar Dabac, William Eggleston, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Seiichi Furuya, Luigi Ghirri, David Goldblatt, Nan Goldin, Sanja Iveković, Sven Johne, Lamia Joreige, Annette Kelm, Iosif Király, Joachim Koester, Zofia Kulik, Darcy Lange, Tatiana Lecomte, Susan Meiselas, Zanele Muholi, Peter Piller, Walid Raad, Einar Schleef, Jörg Schlick, Michael Schmidt, Michael Schuster & Hartmut Skerbisch, Allan Sekula, Ahlam Shibli, Lieko Shiga, Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch, Jo Spence, Christian Wachter, Manfred Willmann, Tobias Zielony

Zanele Muholi, From the series Faces & Phases, 2008 – ongoing, Digital prints of 30 portraits, Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town / Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York

Sven Johne, Ship Cancellation, 2004 Lambda print, silkscreen print on glass, © Sven Johne, Courtesy KLEMM’S Berlin; Bildrecht, Vienna

Camera Austria International, Exhibition view © Museum der Moderne Salzburg / Photo Rainer Iglar

Exhibition

Camera Austria International: Laboratory for Photography and Theory
November 24 – March 3, 2019 / Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Curators: Christiane Kuhlmann, Curator Photography and Media Art, with Christina Penetsdorfer, Assistant Curator Guest Curator: Christine Frisinghelli
Museum der Moderne Salzburg in cooperation with Camera Austria
Visit the exhibition page >

Publication

Camera Austria International: Laboratory for Photography and Theory
Spector Books, Leipzig 2018 / approx. 300 pages, 345 illustrations
Edited by Thorsten Sadowsky for the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
Foreword by Thorsten Sadowsky and texts by Reinhard Braun, Christine Frisinghelli, Toshiharu Ito, Christiane Kuhlmann, Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Sandra Križić Roban, Roberta Valtorta