Paa­re / Cou­ples

Couples are omnipresent in photography, in historical photo albums as well as on Instagram. More fascinating than the countless idealized self-portraits, however, are those shots in which couples are not posing, but seem completely at peace with themselves and strangely removed: playing and courting, in love and intoxicated, desperate and searching for support. Or lonely and lost. The exhibition Paar / Couples is dedicated to the variety of couple dynamics in photography and shows shots in which something is happening between two people.

In 2015, filmmaker Iwan Schumacher began collecting photographs of couples not looking at the camera. Peter Pfrunder, director of the Fotostiftung Schweiz, had long been planning an exhibition with couple images from the Fotostiftung Schweiz's archives and collections. Together they developed the Paar / Couples project. It brings together a wide variety of images in which something is happening between two people. Each individual image is an excerpt from a story that always remains mysterious and tempts one to speculate or project. The exhibition is a playful, associative presentation in which the many snapshots come together to form a new story.

Accompanying the exhibition is the publication Paar / Couples by Iwan Schumacher and Peter Pfrunder, published by Edition Patrick Frey and Fotostiftung Schweiz.