Dear members,
As we enter the second year of the pandemic, we hope that this newsletter finds you well and that your projects and lives are not too upended by the circumstances.
We are happy to share some news about upcoming projects and activities for this year, and we would like to hear from you as well.
For the Spectrum board,
Danaé Panchaud
President
Friday 11 June 12.30-13.30
On Zoom / In French
Reserved for Spectrum members
Estelle Sohier an associate professor at UNIGE. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the University of Naples Orientale. She has worked on the political use of photography during the colonial period and the history of Ethiopian royalty between the 1880s and the 1930s. She conducted research in France, Italy and Ethiopia before joining the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Geneva in January 2010.
At the crossroads of geography and cultural history, her work focuses on the uses of photography, the history of the gaze, and the notion of geographical imagination. For several years, she has been studying the work of the Geneva-based photographer and editor Fred Boissonnas, in particular his work on Swiss landscapes, Greece, Egypt and the Mediterranean, which formed the basis of the exhibition and publication Fred Boissonnas et la Méditerrannée at the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève in 2020.
Registration until Wednesday 9 June at spectrum@photography-in-switzerland.ch.
Friday 2 July 12.30-13.30
On Zoom / In German, French, Italian and English
As we all know all too well, the pandemic has put a major strain on institutions and individuals alike and jeopardized almost every type of events over the last year. Without giving into the narrative that these circumstances provided a welcoming opportunity for reinvention, many organisations and individuals were able to successfully conceive and implement new formats, covering the production of knowledge and artworks to educational programmes and exchanges.
We’d like to hear from you: have you had positive experiences with new formats, and would you be ready to share them with the other Spectrum members? Have you developed a new educational programme that reached people at home, or children in school? Have you launched projects outdoors or in the digital realm? Have you turned your exhibition space into residency or production spaces?
If you would like to share your experience in a 3 to 5 minutes informal presentation, please write to spectrum@photography-in-switzerland.ch.
Saturday 21 August
At ETH-Bibliothek, Zürich
Due to the uncertainty surrounding large events and concerns for the safety of all people involved, we decided not to hold a Spectrum Weekend this year, after postponing it from 2020. We are however looking forward to welcoming you again – if all goes well physically present – at the ETH-Bibliothek for a day of debates, exchange and discovery around photography.
The full programme will follow soon.
The Association of Swiss Museums is currently conducting a survey on the consequences for Swiss museums of the closures and the implementation of protective measures for the reopening. On this basis, it will inform its partners and governing bodies of the situation and will be able to communicate the needs of the sector. All museums in Switzerland and Liechtenstein are invited to participate, and we strongly encourage the museums among our members to participate.
Deadline 16.5.2021
Meanwhile, we would also like to hear from independent and freelance cultural workers, whose situation has been largely under the radar over the last year. We invite our members who are either full-time or part-time independent to fill a survey (if you are an individual member of Spectrum but are salaried and do not work as a freelancer at all, the survey doesn’t apply to you). It is entirely anonymous (your name and email are not required) and it takes 3 to 10 minutes to fill it.
To the survey in English
To the survey in French
To the survey in German
Deadline 15.6.2021