Michael von Graffenried
Michael von Graffenried (born May 7, 1957 in Bern ) is a Swiss photographer who lives and works in Paris, Brooklyn and Switzerland. His best-known work deals with the Algerian civil war from 1991 to 1999. He received numerous awards and honors for his works, which were mostly created under difficult circumstances, including the order of “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres ” from France .
Life
Michael von Graffenried grew up in Bern . His parents were the ethnologist Charlotte von Muralt and the publisher Charles von Graffenried (1925–2012). After graduating from high school , he did an internship with an advertising photographer and began working as a photojournalist. He soon made a name for himself with his idiosyncratic photo reports. Between 1982 and 1984 he curated the photo gallery he founded in Bern, where he exhibited photographers such as Jeanloup Sieff , René Burri , Robert Doisneau , Arthur Tress , Reinhart Wolf and Diane Arbus , among others . In November / December 1984 he presented the Charles-Henri Favrod collection . In 1991 he moved to Paris . Michael von Graffenried is married and has two daughters. In 2007 he spent several months in Cairo , endowed with an artistsinresidence grant from the Association of Swiss Cities. In 2012 he lived in Varanasi , India for half a year .
plant
To mark the 700th anniversary of Switzerland, von Graffenried was able to show his exhibition Swiss Image in Algeria when civil war was just breaking out there. From then on he was the only western photographer to document everyday life in Algeria during and after the civil war for twelve years . His tool was first an old Widelux camera, the photographic results of which became the style for von Graffenried's work. In 2002 he presented his 90-minute film War without Images - Algeria, I know that you know about the Algerian civil war, produced with Mohammed Soudani at the Locarno Film Festival . During the years when von Graffenried regularly traveled to the war-torn country, two more important series of works were created, one on the civil war in Sudan and another multi-year report on the oldest nudist center in Switzerland.
Von Graffenried initially worked for print media. In doing so, he maintained as much independence as possible by always renouncing close contractual cooperation with photo agencies or publishers in favor of his journalistic and artistic freedom. With increasing experience and awareness, his interest shifted to conceptual and artistic photography. He showed his work in unconventional places and contexts, for example he presented a report about a drug-addicted couple on posters in public space. Hans-Ulrich Obrist described von Graffenried's way of working with a Widelux camera as a kind of organic fusion of camera and photographer: the camera becomes a body.
The well-known Swiss ethnologist René Gardi , who was his mother's scientific mentor , explained to the boy Michael von Graffenried : “If you don't experience anything on the Guggershörnli (small mountain near Bern), then you don't need to travel to Africa, then experience it You nothing there either. ”This ethnological leitmotif characterizes von Graffenried's work. He portrayed the American provincial town of New Bern , which was founded by one of his ancestors, Christoph von Graffenried in 1710, on its three-hundredth anniversary in his ruthless honesty, but only to the shared joy of the local population.
Graffenried does not hesitate to publicly express his political views. He was a vehement opponent of the so-called minaret initiative , with which the ban on building minarets was inscribed in the Swiss Federal Constitution , which is recognized as constitutional nonsense, as it deprives a minority of an existing right and curtails municipal sovereignty. Von Graffenried commented on the success of this constitutional initiative with an impressive video of the construction of a minaret for the Brick Lane Mosque in London and the refusal to exhibit in Switzerland until constitutional justice is restored.
From 2014, von Graffenried worked for a year and a half as a picture editor for the information and picture magazine sept.info in western Switzerland. He came up with the initial concept of publishing the print product the size of an iPad while the extensive content was available online. The reader thus had the opportunity to get a quick overview of the physical product and then to purchase the expanded digital magazine according to his interests. Thanks to his international network, many well-known photographers took part in this publishing experiment.
Awards
- 1989 World Press Photo Award
- 2006 Knight of the French Legion of Honor
- 2010 Dr. Erich Salomon Prize of the German Society for Photography
Illustrated books
- Under Bern's arbors . Text by Sergius Golowin . VDB, Bern 1980
- Gurten Folk Festival . Benteli, Bern 1981
- Berner Beizen portraits . VDB, Bern 1982
- Kramgasse Bern . VDB, Bern 1983
- Bundeshaus photographs . Grafino, Bern 1985
- Market in the Bernese region . Text by Ueli Schmezer . ED, Langnau 1988
- “I'm not to blame”. Documentation on the fall of Elisabeth Kopp . Ringier, Zurich 1989
- Swiss image . Benteli, Bern 1989
- Swiss People . Geneva / Steffisburg 1991
- Algeria. The dream of democracy . Benteli, Bern 1993
- Sudan. The forgotten war . Benteli, Bern 1995
- Holländer Tower Bern. The creation of the city of Bern in pictures . Text by Markus F. Rubli. Benteli, Bern 1996
- Swiss Press Photo 97 . Benteli, Bern 1997
- Naked in Paradise (with Harald Szeemann ). Benteli, Bern 1997
- Algeria. The scary war . Benteli, Bern 1998
- World panorama . With a foreword by Franz Hohler . Weltwoche-ABC, Zurich 1998
- Unobstructed view of the Federal Palace. The ceremony. 150 years of CH . Benteli, Bern 1998
- Law. Visages d'une jeune republique hors image . Editions Arts Vivants, Saint-Ursanne 1999
- Du Jura au vaste monde parcours d'un photographe . Editions Ferme Asile, Sion 2000
- Swisspanorama . mvg, Paris 2002
- In the heart of Algeria . Benteli, Bern 2002
- Risk. Contact instead of exclusion . Contact Netz, Bern 2004
- Cocaine love . Benteli, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-7165-1386-5
- Eye on Africa. Photographs from Cameroon . Schwabe, Basel 2009, ISBN 978-3-7965-2582-7
- Outing . Maison Européenne de la Photographie Paris , conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist , 2010
- Beer festival . Steidl Göttingen, 2014, ISBN 978-3869306803
- Changing Rio . Offizin Verlag Zürich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-906276-37-3
Web links
- Literature by and about Michael von Graffenried in the catalog of the German National Library
- Own web presence
- Iris Spalinger: Graffenried, Michael von. In: Sikart
- Short portrait with link to video from Photo Suisse
- Hans Ulrich Obrist HUO Conversation London 15th March 2010
- Robert Fleck laudation for Dr. Erich Salomon Prize
- mvg video channel
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sudan. The forgotten war . Benteli, Bern 1995
- ↑ Naked in Paradise (with Harald Szeemann ). Benteli, Bern 1997
- ↑ Cocaine Love . Benteli, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-7165-1386-5
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Graffenried, Michael von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 7, 1957 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bern , Switzerland |