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“Meaningless, nameless places that are given significance for a moment fascinate me.” If you look at the world from this perspective, there are endless numbers of “non-places” that reveal their inner beauty only to those who possess the eye and the alert thoughtfulness. Swiss photographer Anna Halm Schudel (*1945) has been… Read more
Intro Bio Exhibitions
Introduction“Meaningless, nameless places that are given significance for a moment fascinate me.” If you look at the world from this perspective, there are endless numbers of “non-places” that reveal their inner beauty only to those who possess the eye and the alert thoughtfulness. Swiss photographer Anna Halm Schudel (*1945) has been photographing one project for years that actually has neither beginning nor end. She started out on her “never-ending journey” a trip through the seemingly inconspicuous, the fleeting, everything that whooshes by on her car drives that she captures with her camera. A building as a fleck of color, a copse of trees as if the landscape were marked with creatures, a guard rail on the side of the road: motifs whose banality becomes pure emotion through Halm Schudel’s eye, becoming moving landscape pictures per se, settled between figurative painting and classical landscape photography.
“Paradoxically it is exactly in this blurriness that clarity emerges; metamorphoses also occurring that testify to the relationship between nature and things of culture.”
Michael Pfister in the foreword to the book “The never-Ending Journey”
Mosaic
Every person has multiple facets that combined determine his or her personality. Thinking about these internal images has recently inspired the Swiss photographic artist Anna Halm Schudel to create unusual portraits.
For these portraits, she set her sights on today’s and yesterday’s stars and celebrities in a highly original way. In her large-format photographic art, Schudel erects fascinating monuments to figures of particular charisma – Scarlet Johannsson, Keira Knightly, Barack Obama, and Marilyn Monroe.
All these portraits seem to eschew exact understanding at first glance. The déjà-vu of the faces disseminated daily in the media dissolves into a completely unknown quality. Indeed, a closer look reveals the great surprise lurking in the conspicuously large pixilation: the artist creates a mosaic-like image of thousands upon thousands of smaller portraits she culls from the World Wide Web. All these universally accessible digital images and biographical traces gave Schudel the idea to consolidate the unmanageable flood of visual information in new aesthetic realities. The photo artist reworks the digital portraits of famous people on the computer screen in a complex process. She generally chooses only one section out of every image. While creating the montage she is careful to match the formats and tones so that the reworked picture elements assemble like puzzle pieces to form a new portrait.
The particular allure of these works comes from the ambivalence between nearness and distance, close- and far-range effects. Each of the tiny elements measures only one square centimeter. Were it possible with the naked eye, you might even recognize the artist’s face in a small fraction of the pieces. Anna Halm Schudel thus leaves her own kind of fingerprint on each work in the mosaic series. The artist’s convergence with – if not penetration of – the interior image of a person in fact quite distant from her is nowhere more concretely evident than in these small details.
Almut AndreaeBio
1945 Born in Bern 1964 Diploma from the Secondary School for Girls, Basel 1964 - 67 School of Applied Arts Vevey, Department of Photography 1967 2nd Prize, Children’s Book Exhibition, Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich 1968 College of Art and Design, Birmingham, England Prize for photographs of harbor in Basel “Grosser Europhot” photography prize for fashion 1968 - 73 Assistant to René Groebli in Zurich Introduced to Peter Schudel 1971 Marriage to Peter Schudel 1973 Opening of own photo studio in Zurich Exhibitions
2007 Group exhibition, Historisches Museum Schloss, Nyon Exhibition, Historisches Museum, Baden Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon 2006 Exhibition, Galerie zum Schlüssel, Horgen Exhibition, Fotoforum, Innsbruck Exhibition, Fotoforum, Bozen Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon Group exhibition, Gemeindehaus Horgen Group exhibition, Photoforum PasquArt, Biel 2005 Exhibition, Galerie von Braunbehrens, Munich Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon 2004 Exhibition, in focus Burkhard Arnold, Cologne Exhibition, Galerie Im Ziegelgarten, Monika Wertheimer, Oberwil Exhibition, Triennale Contemporary Art Oberschwaben, Weingarten Exhibition, Galerie de Santos Houston, Texas Exhibition, Festival Foto & Photo, Milan Group exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts Houston Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon 2003 Group exhibition, in focus Burkhard Arnold, Cologne Exhibition, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg Exhibition, HUG Hôpitaux universitaires de Genève Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles Group exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts Houston Group exhibition, Foto-und Kameramuseum, Leipzig Exhibition, Gemeindehaus Horgen Group exhibition, Villa Dutoit, Geneva Commission public art, Schinzenhof, Horgen Group exhibition, Photoforum PasquArt, Biel 2002 Exhibition, Galerie Im Ziegelgarten Oberwil Exhibition, Photoforum Pasqu‘Art, Biel Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles Exhibition, Galerie Maurer, Munich Exhibition, Channel Galleries, Neuss, Deutschland Exhibition, Hotel Seehof, Zurich Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon 2001 Exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles Exhibition, Nikon Image House, Küsnacht, Zürich Group exhibition, Galerie Tigerhof, St. Gallen Group exhibition, Interartes im Nikon Image House, Küsnacht, Switzerland Group exhibition, Photoforum Pasqu‘art, Biel Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon 2000 Exhibition, in focus, Cologne Exhibition, Hotel Seehof, Zurich Exhibition, Kulturzentrum Villa Seerose, Horgen, Switzerland Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles Group exhibition, Museum fur Post und Kommunikation, Hamburg Group exhibition, Nikon Image House, Zurich Group exhibition, "Kunst im Speicher," Wust, Germany Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon Group exhibition, Photoforum PasquArt, Biel 1999 Group exhibition, Galerie Incontro, Zurich Group exhibition, Schloss Nyon Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles 1998 Exhibition, in focus, Cologne Exhibition, Galerie Woerdehoff, Paris Group exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon Group exhibition, Schloss Nyon Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles Exhibition, Festival Focales in Dünkirchen, France 1997 Exhibition, Altstadt-Halle, Zug Exhibition, Alcatel-Galerie, Zurich Exhibition, Galerie Focale, Nyon Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles Exhibition, Schloss Nyon Exhibition, Photoforum Feldegg, Zurich 1996 Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles Exhibtion, Alcatel-Galerie, Wädenswil-Au 1995 Exhibition, Galerie Leuenberger, Solothurn Exhibition, Galerie Wolfbach, Zurich Two exhibitions, in focus, Cologne Exhibition, Museo Ken Damy, Brescia, Italy Exhibition, Arc-en-Ciel, Arles, France Group exhibition, Nikon Gallery, Zurich Exhibition, Internationale Fototage Herten, Germany Exhibition, Department of Culture, Waldshut, Germany 1994 Exhibition , Arc-en-Ciel, Arles, on the occasion of Rencontres de la Photographie Exhibition, Mamyia Foto Galerie, Biel Exhibition, Galerie Maurer, Munich 1993 Exhibition, Photogalerie Bild, Aarau 1992 Group exhibition “Polaroid,” Nikon Gallery Zurich 1991 - 92 “Kunstszene Zürich” 1987 Realization of the Kodak calendar 1986 Exhibition, Art Connection, Basel 1985 Exhibition, Nikon Gallery, Zurich 1984 Exhibition, La Plume, La-Chaux-de-Fonds Group exhibition, Nikon Gallery, Zurich 1983 Participation in “Kunstszene Zürich”
1982Exhibition, Nikon Gallery, Zurich
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