Fotomuseum Winterthur Collection
Since the foundation of Fotomuseum Winterthur in 1993, building up a collection of contemporary photography has been a major cornerstone of the museum's activities. To date, some 4000 photographs have been purchased, donated or given on permanent loan. Every year since 2003, parts of the collection are presented in specially curated exhibitions accompanied by a series of publications (Set 1, 2, 3, 4 …).
The online collection now provides a further opportunity of making the ever-growing holdings of the Fotomuseum Winterthur readily accessible to a broader international audience. The works presented online as publicly accessible reproductions are copyright protected. Users are invited to explore the ideas and working methods of some 300 individual photographers by browsing the index of artists and titles, or using the full-text search facility to find information about the artists and their techniques and to read commentated descriptions of the works in the collection.
In addition to the publicly accessible section of the collection, we have also provided a service for curators, students and specialists in the field of photography who can register to gain full access to the entire online collection. We aim to make most of the works and groups of works in our collection viewable online by the end of 2007.
The focus of the Fotomuseum Winterthur Collection is mainly on international works and groups of works from 1960 to the present. Starting with works by Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Daido Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki and William Eggleston, the collection is structured to reflect the actual development of photography. There is documentary photography - including works by Larry Clark, Peter Hujar, John Gossage, Anders Petersen, Paul Graham, Joel Sternfeld, Nan Goldin, Gilles Peress, Nicolas Faure, Richard Billingham, Joachim Brohm etc. - and conceptual photography represented by the work of Lewis Baltz, Fischli Weiss, Annette Messager, Hans Danuser, Roni Horn, Komar&Melamid, Thomas Ruff, Ann-Sofi Sidén, Christopher Williams, Tacita Dean and others. Artistic approaches combining both narrative and analytical aspects include the work of Boris Mikhailov and Annelies Štrba etc. On the threshold of the digital revolution, the collection also includes new offshoots such as small photographic publications, posters and digital projections.
Following our recent acquisition of the high-profile American Jedermann Collection, focusing on conceptual and media-analytical photography from c. 1960 to 1990, we are now able to present an even broader spectrum of photography.
Contact: Thomas Seelig