Walter Pfeiffer's Scrapbooks.
Walter Pfeiffer's Scrapbooks from 1969 to 1982 are a very unique Wunderkammer. Pfeiffer's polaroids and photographs alternate with miscellaneous objects—newspaper clippings, postcards, packaging, tickets—and brief punning notes. Pfeiffer assembles all of this into a large collage full of surprising references and comparisons that is both a visual diary and creative foundation of his artistic work. In his Scrapbooks, Pfeiffer's keen view of Eros, Zeitgeist and popular culture, his disrespectful humor as well as his appreciation for the poetry in the mundane and banal, are sharply revealed. They offer a view into Pfeiffer's meandering and playful universe and are a contemporary document that captures the Zeitgeist of the 1970s and 1980s with ephemeral elegance.
Walter Pfeiffer (born 1946 in Beggingen) is a Zurich-based photographer and graphic designer. He spent a great many years photographing for the underground gay zine scene. His breakthrough didn't come till the turn of the millennium, however, particularly after his book
Welcome Aboard – Photographs 1980–2000 was published by Edition Patrick Frey in 2001. Heir to photographers such as Wilhelm von Gloeden or Herbert List and to the painter Paul Cadmus, contemporary of Larry Clark,
Nan Goldin or
Peter Hujar, he has built a founding work for contemporary photography which has deeply marked the generations of
Juergen Teller,
Wolfgang Tillmans and
Ryan McGinley. Pfeiffer's works can now be found at the Kunsthaus Zürich, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Bundeskunstsammlung Bern as well as in the Windsor Collection and Sir Elton John Photography Collection, among others.
Texts by Martin Jaeggi.
Graphic design: Studio Achermann.
published in 2012
bilingual edition (English / German)
25,2 x 32,5 cm (softcover, box set)
460 pages (224 color ill.)
ISBN : 978-3-905929-25-6
EAN : 9783905929256
sold out
