Images to Engage the Mind
\n30 August 2025 \u2013 15 February 2026
\nFotostiftung Schweiz<\/p>\n
Opening: Friday, 29 August 2025, 6 pm<\/p>\n
The work of Roger Humbert (1929\u20132022) positions him as a pioneer of Swiss photography. Humbert\u2019s guiding principle, \u201cI photograph light\u201d, substantiates his artistic exploration of the interplay between subject and object, materiality and consciousness, and thus physics and metaphysics. He produced the majority of his photographs \u201cto engage the mind\u201d in the solitude of the darkroom at night. In non-repeatable ways, this artist played with stencils, which served him as pre-digital image generators, resulting in unique photograms and luminograms. In the 1960s, together with Ren\u00e9 M\u00e4chler, Rolf Schroeter and Jean-Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Schnyder, he established \u2018concrete photography\u2019, a movement still well-known today.<\/p>\n
The exhibition presents an overview of Humbert\u2019s oeuvre, much of which has been housed at Fotostiftung Schweiz since 2007. Not only camera-less photographs are on display, but also series in which he documented the world of objects. At the age of 90, Humbert was still enthusiastically investigating digital methods of capturing light. The juxtaposition of this late work with his early analogue light experiments visualises Humbert\u2019s ambitions and demonstrates an intertwining of independent artwork with the day-to-day business of a photographer in the applied domain, who ran a successful studio in Basel.<\/p>\n