Paare / Couples

Couples are omnipresent in photography. Two people arrange themselves, look into the camera, adopt a certain pose and control their facial expressions. By having themselves photographed in this way, they reveal how they wish to be perceived as a couple. Compared to these idealised images, photographs in which couples do not look into the camera are more fascinating. Here, the couples seem to be genuinely themselves, and strangely detached: playing and courting, enamoured and intoxicated, desperate and clinging. Whether they consent to being photographed is no longer clear. Such photographs are either taken secretly, or the couple is so well acquainted with the person behind the camera that they allow him or her to photograph them as a matter of course.

In 2015, filmmaker Iwan Schumacher began collecting photographs of couples who are not looking into the camera. Peter Pfrunder, director of Fotostiftung Schweiz, had long been planning an exhibition of couple pictures from the institution’s archives and collections. Together, they developed the project Paare /Couples. It brings together a very wide variety of photographs, in which something happens between two people. Each individual image is an excerpt from a story that always remains enigmatic and leads to speculation or projection. This exhibition is a playful associative presentation, in which the single moments combine to form a new narrative.

In cooperation with Edition Patrick Frey, a publication is being released to accompany the exhibition.