It’s one of two principal photography festivals in Switzerland, the other being Images in Vevey. They differ from each other in their focus and influence. The Bienne Festival of Photography is annual, has an entry fee, takes place indoors (museums, galleries, historic buildings), and is based on willingly conceptual and formalist emerging art.
Due to its location in a bilingual French-German city in the canton of Berne, at the foot of the Jura Mountains, the festival never succeeded in attracting large crowds of Zurich visitors or those from the francophone Geneva area. Last year, they recorded 6,700 entries, with 65% of the visitors coming from German-speaking Switzerland, 30% from French-speaking Switzerland, and 5% from elsewhere.
The joint organization in September every other year between the bilingual festival and Images in Vevey was not advantageous to the two events. However, the Bienne Festival of Photography has just changed seasons, now presenting its exhibitions in the spring.
But the Bienne festival has acquired over the years a good reputation of the demand and scouting of talent. It’s celebrating its twenty-year anniversary, an opportunity to put forth twenty exhibitions and to increase collaborations with local partners, national or international, like other festivals such as Joburg Photo (South Africa), Goa Photo (India), and Fotopub (Slovania). The anniversary edition’s theme is “Building Permit”, or the fabrication of reality in young, contemporary photography.
Building objects? Catherine Leutenegger (Switzerland) photographs failed 3D prints, showing the limits of digital technology, introducing the strangeness of the technophile ambition to replicate reality. Building realities? Heather Dewey-Hagborg (United States) bypasses the ban on photographing the transgender whistleblower Chelsea Manning, sentenced to thirty-five years in prison, by means of forensic DNA analysis stereotypes, obtaining unsettling 3D portraits.
Building biographies? Delphine Schacher (Switzerland) is interested in the precarious lives of those who populate old detached houses for seasonal workers in Geneva, which were constructed fifty years ago on the longest sides of the Swiss building. Building history? Sheila Soleimani (Iran/United States) assembled photographic collages of symbols of her home country from leaked official images, making events that marked Iran these past decades clash together. Building an image, finally? Miguel Angel Tornero (Spain) turns to non-programmed software to associate photos without any relationship between them, giving free reign to “copy/paste” and the malice of chance.
FESTIVAL
The 20th Bienne Festival of Photography (Switzerland).
From 29 April to May 22nd, 2016.
http://www.bielerfototage.ch
