Fotomuseum Winterthur : Walter Pfeiffer - "In Love With Beauty"

An underground classic for years, Walter Pfeiffer (*1946 Beggingen, lives in Zurich) has developed a unique blend of eroticism and wit, classical serenity and ornamental playfulness, artifice and immediacy that has begun to garner major international attention in the past few years. Fotomuseum Winterthur presents an unprecedented chronological overview of Pfeiffer's photographic work, spanning four decades from his beginnings in the early 1970s to his most recent work. Some of the photographs have never before been published or exhibited; thus the exhibition provides a new perspective on Pfeiffer's oeuvre.

Initially a painter, draughtsman and graphic designer, Walter Pfeiffer started to use photographs as aide-memoirs while working on large-scale photorealist pencil drawings in the early 1970s. But soon Pfeiffer developed a genuine passion for photography and its capacity to capture transient epiphanies of beauty.

Stimulated by a cast of handsome drifters and stylish women, his very own personal Warhol-inspired "Factory", he began to carve out his trademark style that testifies to both his desire for timeless beauty and his precise observation of the permutations of fashion and style.

His breakthrough as a photographer was a series of images of a young man in drag that was included in Jean-Christophe Amman's seminal "Transformer - Aspekte der Travestie" exhibition in 1974. That very year also marked Pfeiffer's first solo photo exhibition.

In 1981, he published his book "Walter Pfeiffer" (recently reprinted by JRP / Ringier), whose cheeky eroticism and raw immediacy was in perfect tune with the Punk / Wave movement, while prefiguring the diary-like, ostentatiously unpretentious approach to photography that would become popular in the 1990s. For most of the 1980s, Pfeiffer embarked on a quest for male beauty that culminated in "Das Auge, die Gedanken, unentwegt wandernd", a 1986 series of b/w close-up portraits of young men, whose elegant reduction was the result of years of study and experimentation, as documented in the exhibition.

Subsequently, Pfeiffer dedicated himself to drawing for a number of years, only to return to photography in the late 1990s. In 2001, he published "Welcome Aboard". In recent years, he has ceaselessly refined his approach to photography and has worked for international magazines such as i-D, Achtung, Butt, the German edition of Vanity Fair, Officiel, Têtu and Out Magazine. His latest book "Cherchez la femme" revealed yet another surprising aspect of his work - zany and glamorous portraits of women.

The exhibition is curated by Martin Jaeggi und Thomas Seelig. The show will be accompanied by a catalogue, published by Steidl. This Autumn, Walter Pfeiffer was awarded the Grand Prix Design 2008 prize by the Swiss Confederation.

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45
8400 Winterthur
www.fotomuseum.ch