Born 1956 in Bern, Switzerland. Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.
The series 20th Century European Battlefields by Peter Hebeisen consists 50 photographs and shows the most important European battlefields of the 20th century. Battlefields are associated with horror, war, death and the wounded. Nothing like this can be seen in the photographs. Instead, the viewer is confronted with lonely, harmoniously beautiful landscapes that were once European locations of war. The artist deliberately shows a counter-position to war photography, which has nothing in common with the immanent horror images that are disseminated in the media. Hebeisen consciously idealizes the place in order to make the extent of the horror, of which one becomes aware only in reflection, even more apparent. The artist is not concerned with documenting the past, but with photographically documenting the drama and creating fields of tension between seeing and no longer being able to see the past.
