Lois Hechenblaikner

Lois Hechenblaikner (own Alois Hechenblaikner, * 1958 in Reith im Alpbachtal ) is an Austrian photographer .

Life

After training as a car electrician, Hechenblaikner made various long-distance trips and began to take photos on them . From the results of his photographic expeditions he created Slide - Multivision look and took it on tour. Initially, the focus was on East Asia ( Philippines in 1985 , New Guinea in 1987 , Indonesia in 1988 and 1989 , Vietnam in 1989 ), then other countries and regions were added ( Israel in 1990 , Rajasthan in 1992 and 1993 , Burma in 1993 , Bhutan in 1994 , Oman in 1995 , Costa Rica in 1998 , 1999 Spiti and Kinnaur , 2000 Cambodia ). In 1995/96 he received the Kodarama Award .

Since the mid-1990s, he has devoted himself to motifs from Tyrolean tourism and popular entertainment , polarizing with an unadorned look behind the scenes of mass tourism and major events . As an artistic medium, he increasingly used photographs with small and large format cameras and created “series of works with depth grammar” over a period of several years. An exhibition in Mayrhofen with pictures of fans of the Zillertal Schürzenjäger was banned by the local mayor in 1997 and had to move to Innsbruck, a slanderous action by the Schürzenjäger because of the photos showing drunk and wild peeing concertgoers was unsuccessful. In 2000 his multivision Wo ist Tirol? at the Frankfurt Weitsicht Festival , Europe's largest slide event, voted the best production by the audience and awarded the journalist and publicist award in Austria together with its Edition Direttissima . In Bad Hofgastein, on the other hand, the chairman of the tourism association had the posters for the event secretly removed.

For the travel and recipe book Tyrol cooks! , which won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for the best regional cookbook in the world, he contributed the photographs.

In its photo series, BergWerk documents the structural and technical interventions in the mountain landscape that were carried out in the summer for winter sports and shows the supposed nature as an industrial zone. Glacier pathology compares the dulling in the summer ski areas with the "spreading of shrouds" in order to slow down glacier retreat . Analogous to this, New Dimensions depicts the lonely bands of snow of the valley runs amidst green spring meadows. Alpine Entertainment describes the entry of the entertainment industry into the mountain world, which is no longer sufficient as a grandiose natural theater in itself, but degenerates into a backdrop for spectacular shows. Intensive care units refers to the similarity between the hose lines for Jagertee, mulled wine and other beverages and those of medical devices; Enjoy life is the theme of the increasing “ballermannisation” of places that were once known as travel destinations for athletes and those seeking relaxation. Social sculptures includes portraits of people attending folk music concerts.

In the series Summit Meetings and Behind the Mountains he juxtaposes black and white pictures from the archive of agricultural engineer Armin Kniely with his own motif-like pictures of the present. For the Après Ski series of works , he collected pieces of shredded skis with the labels that remained on them at a disposal company and rearranged their photographs according to family of terms in order to depict the linguistic exaggeration of a mass product, now "torn from the aesthetic appearance of a ski". He also added an installation made of shredded skis that he had collected over the years for the Intensive Care Wards exhibition in the Alpine Museum in Bern .

Hechenblaikner, who grew up in a tourism business himself, also expressed himself critically in interviews about the Disneylandization of his homeland, the “unlimited industrialization” of the mountains and the effects of tourism on the “soul landscape” of the locals. He denounced the “insensitivity in building” tourist architecture, which led to “alpine metastases”. Analogous to the artificiality of the tourist “cosiness”, programs like the Musikantenstadl are also a “management of the desires and emotional deficits of the people”.

Hechenblaikner has many years in Ischgl the Ballermann -Skitourismus and après ski photographed in Ischgl, the beginning of 2020 to a hotspot for COVID-19 infections were from travelers from many European countries. The Bildbald Ischgl was published in June 2020 .

Publications

Lois Hechenblaikner and Friedrich Schwarzenauer (text): Vietnam . Bucher Verlag , Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7658-0771-0 , Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7658-1199-8 .
with Fred Fettner (text): Alpbachtal . Portrait of a Tyrolean valley. Haymon Verlag , Innsbruck 1994, ISBN 3-85218-171-2 .
with Michael Neumann-Adrian (text): Rajasthan . Bucher Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7658-0954-3 .
with Christoph Wagner , Karin Longariva: Tyrol cooks! a culinary journey through South Tyrol, East Tyrol, North Tyrol. Christian Brandstätter Verlag , Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85498-296-8 .
Behind the mountains. A local lore. Texts by Thomas Weski and Wolfgang Ullrich. Edition Braus, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-89466-300-1 .
with Thomas Weski: off piste. an Alpine story. Dewi Lewis Publishing, Manchester 2009, ISBN 978-1-904587-78-1 .
Winter wonderland. German and English, Steidl Verlag , Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86930-376-5 .
Folk music. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-95829-175-1 .
Behind the mountains. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-86930-737-4 .
Ischgl. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2020, ISBN 978-3-95829-790-6 .

Solo exhibitions (selection)

1997: Fotoforum West Innsbruck

2002: Lech am Arlberg, Kulturhaus Fux

2003: Leica Galleries in Solms and Tokyo

2004: Eisenach, Bohl's photo gallery

2005: Montpellier Municipal Photo Gallery

2006: Widmer + Theodoridis Zurich

2009: Leica Gallery Salzburg

2009: Wolfberg Arts Forum Ermatingen

2010: Theater am Saumarkt Feldkirch

2012: Alpine Museum Bern

2014: Galerie Thomas Salis Salzburg

2014: Rimessa Castelmur Stampa

2017: Fundaziun La Tuor Samedan (CH)

2018: Thalgau cultural power plant

2019: Museum Starnberger See

Awards

Kodarama Award Best of the year 1995/96
King Albert Mountain Award 2012

Web links

Literature by and about Lois Hechenblaikner in the catalog of the German National Library
Homepage of Lois Hechenblaikner with numerous series of works
TV report by SRF Kulturplatz , January 16, 2013
Lois Hechenblaikner at Steidl Verlag
Peer Teuwsen: Behind the Postcards , opening speech for the exhibition Intensive Care Units in the Alpine Museum in Bern
Holly Williams: Snow patrol: Lois Hechenblaikner's photographs reveal the seamier side of the Alps , The Independent , January 7, 2012
DLF (Deutschlandfunk) nuances. Music and personal questions from October 4, 2015: The photographer Lois Hechenblaikner in conversation with Michael Langer
"Criticism of cynical marketing" FAZ review on folk music (2019)

Individual evidence

↑ About Buddha, India, many high mountains and flat brains in Tyrol , workshop talk on July 25, 2002 in the Atelier Beinert in Munich, accessed on June 27, 2013.

↑ Jürg Steiner: Backstage of the tourist madness , Tages-Anzeiger from October 1, 2012, accessed on June 27, 2013.

↑ ^a ^b "The rule of mediocrity" , taz interview with Markus Völker from February 3, 2013, accessed on June 27, 2013.

^ Welcome to Innsbruck: "The Liberation of the Zillertal"! , Bezirksblätter Tirol No. 34 of August 20, 1997, p. 28.

↑ Thomas Seifert: Das demontierte Idyll , Eisenach Online from September 2, 2004, accessed on June 27, 2013.

↑ Joachim Schwitzler: Lois Hechenblaikner on the Wolfsberg , Südkurier, July 2, 2009, accessed on June 27, 2013.

↑ selection from the photo gallery Summit on online 16 December, 2009, accessed June 27, 2013.

↑ Bernhard Tschofen ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : The names of the skis. Lois Hechenblaikner on vocabulary from the garbage (interview). In: A. te Heesen, Kh. Wiegmann u. B. Tschofen (ed.): Vocabulary. Collecting and finding words (= Tübingen Catalogs, 81). Tübingen 2008, pp. 157-165.@1@ 2

↑ Urs Bloch: Jenseits der Schneekanone , Neue Zürcher Zeitung online from November 1, 2012, accessed on January 27, 2013.

↑ "The guest takes something away from us" , interview with Peer Teuwsen online from December 1, 2012, accessed on June 27, 2013.

↑ Not a sip is left ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Salzburger Nachrichten of January 5, 2013.@1@ 2

↑ Lisa Röösli: Lois Hechenblaikner, the specter of many tourism professionals , srf.ch from January 18, 2013, accessed on June 27, 2013.

↑ Heinz Bayer: And daily greetings from the rock crystal , Salzburger Nachrichten of October 3, 2012, accessed on June 27, 2013.

↑ Susanne Binder, Gebhard Fartacek: Der Musikantenstadl: alpine popular culture in a strange view , LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, p. 208 f. ( online at Google Books ).