Lugano, an exhibition at MASI on the history of the spread of photography in Switzerland

The first ever photograph of the Matterhorn and the oldest photos taken in Canton Ticino: these are some of the images in the exhibition Dal vero. Nineteenth-Century Swiss Photography, on view at the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI) in Lugano curated by Martin Gasser and Sylvie Henguely. The exhibition is an overview dedicated to the first 50 years of the diffusion of the photographic medium in Switzerland and features important historical works never before exhibited, such as the first-ever photograph of the Matterhorn and the oldest photos taken in Canton Ticino. The exhibition embraces more than 400 photographic works from 1839 to the 1890s from more than 60 public and private collections. The different accents in the different linguistic areas and regions of the country thus sketch the progressive character and dynamic development of the young federal state in 19th century Europe. The sensation given by the new visual experience, the immediate exchange between art and photography, its key role in the development of tourism, its use as evidence of local customs and traditions, and in industry and science are some of the thematic focuses explored by the exhibition.

The itinerary

Mirror endowed with memory: this was how the daguerreotype, a photographic process of developing images on a copper plate, unique and non-reproducible, was defined. This technique reached Switzerland, even the most interior, thanks to itinerant photographers, who with their heavy cameras produced clear and precise images, according to nature, precisely, from life. In the initial sections of the exhibition, devoted to the beginnings of photography and thus to daguerreotypes, some Swiss masters of this art, such as the Genevan banker, diplomat and amateur Jean-Gabriel Eynard and the engraver Johann Baptist Isenring, famous for his “life-size” daguerreotype portraits, stand out, among others. It becomes clear how, in its early stages, even in Switzerland, photography was still strongly intertwined, in terms of choice of subjects, compositional principles and use, with the other arts, particularly painting, which it would replace as a viable alternative for inexpensive portraits. But also with the graphic arts, whose service it placed itself. Indeed, it was Isenring who would spread the use of photography as a model for engravings in Switzerland, a technique also employed by the first woman photographer, Franziska Möllinger, in her Swiss views published as lithographs from 1844. By contrast, one of the rare known daguerreotypes of Ticino, a portrait of an unknown and elegantly dressed young man, a shining example of the rising bourgeoisie, taken in Lugano, dates from 1842. Thanks to the outside gaze, that of travelers, the grandeur of the Swiss landscape and its mountains begins to be immortalized. Surprising is the incredibly modern cut of the spectacular daguerreotypes by English artist John Ruskin, who took the first photographs of Ticino, such as one of a rock near Bellinzona’s Castelgrande (1858) or, in 1849, the first image ever taken of the Matterhorn. Before long, photography would prove to be a very powerful vehicle for tourist advertising, a process favored by the development of Swiss transportation infrastructure, which went hand in hand with the simplification of the photographic process (thanks to the use of glass negatives and albumen prints). This gave rise to popular motifs and tourist “destinations,” such as the Staubbach waterfall in the Lauterbrunnen valley, immortalized in Englishman Francis Frith’s 1863 image. A breathtaking photo by the famous French photographer Adolphe Braun, capturing the endless expanses of the Rhone glacier crossed by a group of climbers, including a woman, is from the following year.

While photography serves international openness, it is also employed to create anidealized Swiss identity that must stand out from the foreigner. This phenomenon is evident in Traugott Richard’s Customes Suisses series (c. 1875), featuring peasant types and girls in a traditional costume that corresponds to no reality. But earlier than elsewhere, photography is used in Switzerland to identify the foreign and the different within the country’s borders. In the exhibition, a unique corpus of portraits on salted paper marks the beginning of so-called sign photography: these are portraits of homeless people and nomads, taken in 1852-53 by Carl Durheim himself: people who, after the founding of the state in 1848, are moved from one canton to another without being accepted. Another section highlights photography as a profession and the emergence of local portrait studios in the 1850s, a phenomenon that would lead to easy commercialization and standardization of images. The Taeschler brothers of St. Gallen also took advantage of this trend. Yet the most impressive shot is the one, on an entirely different register, by their half-brother Carl, who, as in a snapshot, captured a group of French soldiers interned in St. Mangen Church in 1871, during the Franco-Prussian conflict.

A large section at the end of the exhibition’s itinerary highlights the role of photography since the late 1860s in documenting science, medicine, technical developments and the urban and hydraulic development of the Swiss territory. In the field of medicine are Emil Pricam ’s photographs of patients before and after an operation, or Robert Schucht’s systematic documentation of malformed ears. The construction of the Gotthard Railway in 1872-82, documented by Adolphe Braun himself, among others, is considered an early example of cutting-edge and progressive construction in nineteenth-century Switzerland. A huge project that would permanently change the urban and hydraulic development of the Swiss territory.

Also part of the exhibition are a video with interviews with curator Martin Gasser and curator Sylvie Henguely and a video on daguerreotypes and photographic techniques, featuring restorer Sandra Petrillo.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication available in German and French published by Steidl Verlag, Göttingen.

The exhibition is co-produced with Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, and Photo Elysée, Lausanne, and is hosted in the MASI Lugano venue at LAC.

Lugano, an exhibition at MASI on the history of the spread of photography in Switzerland

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