Industrie Bild

Switzerland has experienced a proud industrial era. Hundreds of thousands of photographs of spinning mills, weaving mills, embroideries, the metal and machine industry, the electrical, clothing and food industries, the construction of roads, railways, power stations and factories are stored in the archives of eastern Swiss companies.

These photographs are stored as glass plates, blueprints or carefully made prints in the cellars of factories, sometimes forgotten in shoe boxes, exposed to dust and moisture, sometimes carefully archived and organised chronologically in photo albums. Until now, they have received little attention. And yet: they are a great treasure trove of our country's history, providing pictorial information about all industrial matters, about the modernisation of Switzerland, the innovative and productive power of the once young companies, life in the factories that were off-limits to outsiders, the mentalities in the various industries, the social coexistence or clash between top and bottom, women's and men's work, leisure time and industrial discipline. They also present the monumental, grandeur of industrial buildings and machines in an otherwise small-scale Switzerland.

Giorgio Wolfensberger, himself a trained industrial photographer, has meticulously combed through many company archives for the Fotomuseum Winterthur. The selected photographs - many of which are being shown for the first time - form a pictorial history of the economic region of Eastern Switzerland and industrial photography from 1870 to the present day.

The exhibition was curated by Urs Stahel and Giorgio Wolfensberger. A collaboration with Freuler-Palast, Näfels.