Walter Pfeiffer started photography in the 70's without any technical ambition, but the will to provide a new visual vocabulary for beauty, erotism and freedom of life. His work gaining its initial recognition through an underground network has reached today status of a cult object.
Parallel with his photos exploring the sexualisation of the everyday, Walter PFeiffer directed few videos depicting the Zurich scene of his friends hanging out in his studio. For the very first time thoses rare and funny little plays are compiled in a DVD. It is the occasion to reassess Pfeiffer's pioneered position within contemporary art and culture at large.
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.
