Expanded Horizons

The Fabian & Claude Walter Gallery presents this fine selection of works by the five photographers in an exhibition curated by Daniel Blochwitz.

This exhibition brings together works by five exceptional Swiss photographers—Werner Bischof (*1916 †1954), Balthasar Burkhard (*1944 †2010), René Burri (*1933 †2014), Robert Frank (*1924) and René Groebli (*1927)—who sought to explore with their cameras the roads, streets and off-the-beaten-paths around the globe and in the process ended up re-shaping their chosen medium as well as our view of the world. Not unlike people who feel the need to cross oceans whenever they stand by the sea, or others who have the urge to climb a peak whenever they gaze up from the foot hills, these photographers growing up in insular Switzerland had to see for themselves the world beyond the quaint and mountain-obstructed vistas. In fact, it was René Burri who once said that he had to leave his home country, because he needed to experience an open, an expanded horizon. The pictures Burri and the other photographers took of the world and reported back to us in newspapers, illustrated magazines or photo books were filled with a radical sense of humanism, a passion for life and people, and with an awareness that even the worst instances captured on film might carry a seed of hope and change-forthe-better within.