El increíble mundo de la fotografía. Colección Ruth y Peter Herzog

The Kunstmuseum basel presents The Incredible World of Photography. Ruth and Peter Herzog Collection, the exhibition curated by Olga Osadtschy and Paul Mellenthin will be open until October 4, 2020. A flea market discovery in the 1970s led to the creation of a unique collection with 500,000 photographs. The collection's holdings date from the early days of technology invented in 1839 and date back to the 1970s. They cover the entire history of analog photography and all of its developments and materials, plates, emulsions, chemicals, papers, and devices. The collector couple made important discoveries for the 19th century in particular, which broadened their understanding of the eventful history of photography.
For the first time, a comprehensive portrait of the photo collection is now being shown in Switzerland. Based on 400 objects, the exhibition presents its highly individual order and the articulated new view of the history of photography. The collection focuses on key issues, but also questions about collecting photography, the relationship between archive and museum and, not least, the relationship between photography and art far beyond the already canonized art photography.
An interactive wall projection enables individual access to the digital holdings of the collection. With the help of artificial intelligence, pictures with similar motifs are grouped into families, creating lines of alignment between motifs of different times.
For more information visit: https://www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch