Peter Maurer
Peter Maurer was born in 1963 in Weisslingen, Canton Zurich. He works as a freelance photographer and lectures on photography at the F+F Schule für Kunst and Mediendesign in Zurich. His photography can be seen in several collections, for instance in the Fotostiftung Schweiz, in the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, in the Marco Pfeifer Collection or the H. Gernsheim Collection. His many awards include the 1990 Schweizer Preis at the European Kodak Awards, the 1992 national grant for Applied Art for portraiture from the American South-West, the 1995 national prize for portraiture from the Philippines. From 1985 to 1997 he worked intensively with the Appenzellerland region and its inhabitants. The Appenzell pictures were exhibited in Zurich and in Milan, in the context of the CH-700 anniversary in Fribourg, in the Belgian cities of Hasselt, Liège and Brussels and in the Museum Appenzell and they won the Reuters Alp Action Media Award for photography. The illustrated volume Appenzellerland – Gesichter vom Alpstein was published in 1998 by Niggli Verlag. Faceland – Gesichter und ihre Landschaften was created during several trips through Europe from 2000 to 2006. Faceland was exhibited in 2007 in the Photoforum PasquArt in Biel, Switzerland and in 2008 in the Galerie Périscope and de Wégimont in the framework of the International Photographic Biennale in Liège, Belgium. In 2009 it is presented in the Kulturzentrum Kammgarn in Schaffhausen, Switzerland.
Faceland
“Faceland” portrays people and their corresponding landscapes from six different European countries: Finland, Ireland, Poland, Switzerland, Rumania and Sardinia. The black-and-white faces are larger than life and look directly at the camera, revealing every pore, every little hair to the onlooker. The photos in colour capture the peoples’ rural landscapes, presenting wind, grass, clumps, and rocks. These are no untouched natural landscapes, but cultivated land, exploited and formed by its inhabitants and, like the portraits, always recorded in the very same way. How do we recognize a Polish face or a Finnish landscape? The photos provide awareness for clichés and force the viewer to think about his own perception ...
One can actually assimilate this work like music. It is, as is music, determined by opposites and repetitions. The landscapes answer consecutively, as do the faces. It is not harmony that is being attempted, but calculated dissonance. That fascinates me as aesthetic form.
Peter von Matt
“Faces as landscapes, landscapes as faces: The interplay of the surfaces hones in on the beauty of the subtle differences.”
Peter Pfrunder
book/publication
Faceland Gesichter und ihre Landschaften
120 pages, 42 illustrations, 21,5 x 28 cm, hardcover, english/german,
CHF 48.–, Euro ca. 30.–, ISBN 978-3-7212-0691-3. Niggli publishers, Sulgen | Zürich. www.niggli.ch
With texts by Peter Pfrunder and Peter von Matt.
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