A new momentum in Vevey, in Switzerland. Up to now Stefano Stoll was manager of the Cultural Services in the city and director of the Festival of Photography. But the cumulative effects of the two responsibilities were too heavy for him, above all the concentrated efforts with which the open air Festival of Photography attained the international status that it has today. So Stefano Stoll renounced his position as the representative of culture in Vevey to concentrate solely on the development of the biennial Festival of Photography.
Stefano Stoil set up his office in l’Espace Quai1, situated in the Vevey railway station. For five years Quai1 has been the Festival of Photography’s permanent exhibition space. Most of the time it shows the work of talented young people who are participants in the Vevey International Grand Prix of Photography, one of the best endowed in Europe (40,000 Swiss francs). L’Espace is expanding, acquiring a new “white cube”, an immaculate space that is ideal for the exhibits.
Opened on the 23rd of September, Quai1’s new exhibition symbolizes the future ambition of the Festival of Photography, notably in terms of the partnerships with the continent’s great photographic institutions. Organised in collaboration with FOAM (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam), the exhibition presents the aerial photographs by Sjoerd Knibbeler a 34 years old years old Dutchman, . His series “Digging up clouds”, which was awarded the Grand Prix by the jury of this year’s Hyères Festival of Fashion and Photography, makes every effort to render the invisible visible, to reuse the well-known word of Paul Klee.
Sjoerd Knibbeler gives form to the movements of the air with images of translucent, inflatable sculptures, of tornados improvised in the studio, of fumes crossing empty frames, of steam rising out of geothermal power stations in Iceland, of paper planes made from aircraft plans that have never been built. Poetic, magnificent, as light as a lofty thought about photography.
EXHIBITION
Sjoerd Knibbeler
23 sept – 24 oct 2015
Espace Quai1
Place de la Gare 3
CH – 1800 Vevey
T. +41 (0)21 922 48 54
Switzerland
