Public Guided Tour in English Hannes Schmid - Real Stories

After various exhibitions such as the one in the Museum Folkwang in Essen and that in the Fotostiftung in Winterthur, the Kunstmuseum Bern is presenting, with some 150 artworks, a first-ever large-scale overview of Hannes Schmid’s oeuvre dating from the mid-1970s onwards. Highlights of the exhibition are images of people and visual narratives ranging from his iconic cowboy myths to his existential and liminal experiences of foreign cultures. The exhibition is thematically structured into four sections: RITUALS, VISIONS, DIALOGS, and MOVEMENT. In this way the exhibits are not ordered chronologically but into series that allude to a range of qualities intrinsic to photography. The section RITUALS is devoted to the subject of ceremonies, both religious and social. VISIONS embraces two thematic foci Schmid’s photography is renowned for: cowboys and fashion, exhibiting them side-by-side as equals. The guiding principle in this section is essay-style narrative in the medium of staged photography. The section DIALOGS investigates photography’s communicative qualities, something prevalent especially in portrait photography. It hones in on the two questions “who are you” and “who do you want to be,” behind or in front of the camera, that is, the confrontation between the photographer and the sitter. Schmid was most direct in such visual dialogs in his treatment of the music stars of the 1980s. The final section MOVEMENTS takes up the subject of beat and the breathless pace of contemporary life, things that contrast fundamentally with photography because it freezes time in silent images. But even this Hannes Schmid can palpably articulate in the photographic image, especially in his shots of AC/DC, Queen, Blondie, or Mick Jagger concerts. The last section also focuses on heroism and star cult in the medium of photography.