Urban 2000-2003

With this in mind, we chose «urban moments (2000-2003)» as our second exhibition's topic.

We live in an urban area. We soak up urban views in our everydaylives. We're on home ground.

Welcome. 

Daniel Fabian - Zurich concrete
People rushing over the concrete
They do not meet

Their shadows though on the concrete
Those meet

They penetrate each other
And separate instantly

They are following their people
Reluctantly?

 
Michael Güller
[Preview]
Urban spaces, movements, light, noise and distraction, scents, monuments, and seagulls--my eye is catching a glimpse of the city in passing, like a bird flying over it. A city is always inbetween, next to us, all around.

Capturing a city from the hips or in flight, with no viewfinder (and with no aim, just as I walk around in cities and start to understand them), and capturing it in a sequence of 4 photos--these kinds of photos do the city justice. These unsteady and distorted moods, focussed or blurred, always intertwining, often surprising. These moments, in which life and the surrounding buildings depart from their usual context and suddenly appear strangely different: multiplied, in new configurations, or put in relationship with something that would be alien to them under normal circumstances. All this renders a peculiarly precise image of the city the way I see it.

The two 4-lens-cameras needed for this kind of game are called ActionSampler and SuperSampler, and are distributed by the Lomographische Gesellschaft Wien. With the ActionSampler (2x2 photos), there is a delay of 1 second between the two exposures; with the SuperSampler (1x4 photos), 2 seconds between the first and the last exposure.

 
David Hakim - Usual
what you get used to

 
Hanspeter Högger - Traces in my city Zürich
[Preview]
I live in Zurich. I work a lot. I haven't got much time. Not enough time to take a closer look at this city, and at what's going on inside it. So I quit my every-day life for a while to wander through my city with eyes wide open and camera ready. It was a discovery tour in more than one sense. First, I went to places I believed I knew well, and found many facets previously unknown to me. Later, when I studied the preprints, I discovered further details I had overlooked at the site itself. A photo is a window onto a hidden world. Even though it exists in its own right, it is invisible to my eyes, and can only been seen through the camera.

My pictures depict streets, houses, and squares in Zurich that we all know well--but that we, at the same time, don't know at all. The inhabitants can only be perceived by the traces they have left.

 
Attila Kerényi
[Preview]
«I heard the song, 'Lisboa'. It reminded me of the journey you wanted to make those days. But you told me that you never came until Lisbon.»

- «Of course not. That's why I made the song. Do you never dream that you long for a city in which you have never been?»

Antonio Muñoz Molina - "Winter in Lisbon"

 
Nico Krzebek
These days, I rarely return to my «former home» the Mansfeld county in Saxony Anhalt and in particular the town of Hettstedt. Apart from agriculture the area in the eastern Vorharz is marked by its industrial history, mining and metal processing. While long since mining has only left scars in the landscape, agriculture and industry have been struggling desperately for survival since the German Unification. As a consequence of the high rate of unemployment, many young people left the area. So did I. When I now return and try to retrace my past by going for a nocturnal walk - something i used to enjoy formerly - the city reminds me of an empty stage. It's the face of a city where the memories of former times are only shadows in its pale, poorly modern and made up features.

On my last visit at Christmas 2002, the city was covered by a thick layer of ice. The ice evokes many different connotations in me. Its rigidity reflects the difficulty of any movement, the conserved memories of a place that tries to advance but got stuck somewhere along the lines.

In spite the late hour, people and cars passed through some of my pictures. Their presence can only be suspected and often they left no trace at all...

 
Lukas Menzi
[Preview]
I am fascinated by light and shadow, as well as by contrasts. They invoke pictures in my mind, pictures to which I then want to give visible expression. Pictures that want to be expressed. At times, one has to look for the shadow in order to see the light. Light reflected in a wine glass, or in my friends' glasses. Light can also arise from conversations, when you unexpectedly find a common truth: short and penetrating. At these moments, the conversation reaches a new level, and it turns from a flow of contant ripple of words into a largeness of the moment, which has suddenly become present.

 
Roberto Lins - Evanescent Passage
[Preview]
Urban scenes are full of dynamics, chaos, strength and all the frenzy of the everyday urban life. It just goes on and carries you along. The environment richness often confuses and hardens the selection of ephemeral, but sophic scenes or moments throughout one's day after day passage. Having the mind drifted away, even if just for a moment, with feelings and emotions allows me to select my personal view of it. The current essay is based on solitude and concentrates on the composition of symbolic timeless and placeless elements found in the urban environment.

Line, shape, texture and space are graphically rendered to invite you to experience these moments. Be welcome to «Evanescent Passage» and to a possible inner diving into your solitude.

Photographs are hand-printed silver-gelatin onto archival qualitymedium.

Séverine Rion
[Vorschau]

TG 971	Zürich	ZHR	Bangkok	BKK
	05.Dez. 2001	14.30	06.Dez. 2001	06.20
Bangkok: Stopover, T= 31°C, Atmospheric Humidity 80%, Waiting time 2 h 5 min. - Die Frisur hält: 3 Wetter Taft
TG 682	Bangkok	BKK	Hanoi	HAN
	06.Dez. 2001	08.25	06.Dez. 2001	10.15
Finally approaching for landing. On the fields I recognize from far the conic hats, those hats I knew from the travel guide. Vietnam! T=23°C, Atmospheric Humidity 71%. - Die Frisur hält: 3 Wetter Taft

Dec 07 2001, Hanoi, Vietnam
The market. Smell of fried meat, raw fish, sometimes indefinable. Sweet banana, crabs, colours, dragon fruits; exotism. Later I catch sight of the cured hanging dogs. The rickshaw costs me 0.75 US$ today. - Weil ich es mir Wert bin.

Dec 08 2001, Hanoi, Vietnam
All I can see is an endless stream of thousands of bicycles and motorbikes. The traffic is chaotic. Everybody honking. Just go forward, keep eye contact, don’t move jerkily. I feel ready to hire a motorbike. Wind speed 23 miles/h. - Verkehr by Honda Dream

Dec 16 2001, Hoi An, Vietnam
I have a silk dress sewed. The price is 9 US$ for custom made. And three pair of trousers and tow coats, five blouses. - Ist der neu? ...

Dec 26 2001, Mui Ne, Vietnam
Today I get up early. I take the motorbike to the fishing village Mui Ne. The men just came back from the sea with full flews. The women are nervous. Everybody wants to catch the best fishes of the day. They stare at me, from underneath their hats, these women. - Captain Igloo!

Jan 02 2002, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Sneakers, sport bags, western CDs, the prices are irreducible. Adidas, Puma, Nike, obviously only copies. I buy a CD of Cafe del Mar, one of Gainsbourg and some others; the price is 1 US$ per piece. - Just do it.

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 04:34:17 -0700 (PDT) ‘Halt to registration of new motorbikes in Hanoi and HCM City’
Zurich. Wednesday morning. I am in the tramway. The motorbikes were really convenient. I’ m familiar now - with their traffic.
 

Zsuzsanna Lipták - South African Townships
[Preview]
I have been taking photos since I was 18. My focus has always been people: friends and strangers alike. People in their natural environment, in the street, in cafes, while shipping or chatting. Born and raised in big cities, for me, the urban environment has always been the "natural" one...

In this exhibition, I want to show a different face of urban life:South African townships. Townships are relics from the Apartheidsystem, which used to classify men and women according to the colourof their skin, and restricted them to separate areas of living. UnderApartheid, people of dark skin were systematically denied adequatehousing facilities. Large parts of the country were delibaretely leftunderdeveloped and impoverished, while labour opportunities and wealthconcentrated in the few urban centres whose prime areas were, in turn,kept exclusively white. Townships were established on the outerfringes of cities as housing areas for those doing manual labour.Their inhabitants are still almost exclusively Black, and thetownships are not coping with the influx of the large number of peoplefrom poor rural areas who come looking for work. As a result,"informal settlements" (also called "squatter camps") have sprung upon many townships' fringes where tens of thousands of people arecrowded in appaling conditions. One of the most pressing issues facedby post-Apartheid South Africa is to provide adequate housingconditions for these people.

At the same time, township life is much more vibrant than that in thewhite, car-based parts of town. These seem almost dead in comparison,with their shopping malls and large villas, surrounded by electricfences and secured by alarms and guards.

The photos were taken in Soweto, Johannesburg, in March 2000, and inthe Cape Town townships of Kayelitsha, Langa, and Gugulethu betweenMay and August 2002.