This week, Foto Arsenal Wien opens to the general public. Vienna’s first devoted establishment for pictures, it’s led by creative director Felix Hoffmann, a longtime scholar within the medium and former chief curator of C/O Berlin. Foto Arsenal Wien inaugurates its 1,000 sq. metres of gallery area, situated in Vienna’s third district, with two tone-setting exhibitions: ‘Magnum: A World of Images’, drawing on greater than 300 images from the world-famous photograph company’s archives, and ‘Simon Lehner: Clear Ideas, Clear Photos’, the primary institutional solo by the younger, Vienna-based artist, identified for his works of concatenated photos and reminiscences. Foto Arsenal Wien advanced from a authorities initiative to determine a media literacy centre in Vienna in 2022. ‘Photos for Everybody’ is the establishment’s mission assertion, a declaration of its ambition to stimulate better curiosity in and dialogue round pictures and lens-based media in a metropolis celebrated for its Klimts and Schieles. Can Hoffmann break by means of Vienna’s conservative tastes? And what’s the function of a medium-specific museum at the moment?
Charlotte Jansen Why did you turn out to be particularly desirous about pictures?
Felix Hoffmann I studied artwork historical past and cultural science, and I at all times work between these two approaches. Throughout my research, I got here throughout a captivating historic follow whereby folks would take a final {photograph} of a member of the family who had simply died. They’d repair the deceased in chairs, make them up and even inject their eyes to maintain them open. It was type of a remembrance follow. Whereas sure photographic theorists, together with Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, posited that mortification occurs by means of the medium of pictures – that urgent the button of a digicam cuts time – I discovered these loss of life photos to imply the other: they needed to make the useless come alive once more.
CJ How did that scholarly curiosity lead you to work in pictures museums?
FH After graduating, I obtained a fellowship to work in a number of German museums and, because of the approach issues are structured in Germany, I used to be fastened in a pictures field from then on. However I’m extra desirous about pictures as a system than I’m as a medium.
CJ Foto Arsenal Wien launches this month with two exhibitions, the bigger of which is dedicated to images from the Magnum archives. This feels a reasonably conventional option to kick off the museum’s programme.
FH The query of what to begin with is at all times difficult. Do you make exhibitions for your self, on your personal bubble, or do you attempt to attain a wider public? My workforce and sources are restricted – there are solely eight of us – so I’ve to contemplate what we will handle whereas additionally supervising a building website and growing the museum’s infrastructure.
I’m absolutely satisfied that good content material generally is a bridge: we have to persuade folks to enter the museum as a result of they’ve heard of Magnum and so they know Robert Capa, then we will shock them with one thing else. Vienna is a conservative metropolis and it’s going to be essential to work like this as an establishment for the primary decade. I might have beloved to begin with an exhibition by Zanele Muholi that raises questions on cultural heritage, sexuality and gender, but when solely two folks come to the present then who’re you partaking with that questioning? Every thing wants to come back on the proper second. I’m right here to vary one thing for the higher, to convey concepts to the town, nevertheless it takes time. I needed to begin with names which are well-known domestically.
CJ The Magnum exhibition focuses on analogue methods and archives. How do you hope to shock folks?
FH Magnum is an excellent instance to elucidate the circulation and distribution of photos. The exhibition comprises 18 case research that present how archival practices developed from 1947 on, in addition to how members of Magnum created their very own archives, akin to Susan Meiselas’s Kurdish Migration Archive and Russell Miller’s political archive on public protest in Poland. These clarify how the choice course of occurred over contact sheets and thru the printing course of, and the way photos have been distributed in magazines and newspapers earlier than the tv period.
CJ This distribution system you seek advice from feels distant at the moment.
FH We are attempting to elucidate how energy dynamics are carried out by means of pictures, how photos turn out to be a part of the financial, political and socio-cultural system. What sort of photos have been saved in archives and aren’t accessible anymore tells us quite a bit about this course of. After we speak in regards to the present political state of affairs, now we have to speak about elements of energy and what photos are doing to us. We have to put together the youthful technology for the long run. One of many museum’s objectives, by means of our exhibitions and academic programme, is to elucidate the position of pictures and lens-based media and their impression on us.
CJ How did the pictures scene develop in German-speaking nations, and why is there a necessity for a pictures museum in Vienna now?
FH Lots of well-known photographers got here to Austria within the Nineteen Eighties, build up the scene in Graz, and an attention-grabbing journal tradition grew out of that: at the moment, Austria has three pictures magazines. Nonetheless, in Vienna, there wasn’t an actual locus for pictures till the Foto Wien competition was launched in 2004. The biennial was a part of an initiative to attach plenty of cities by means of the European Month of Images. Within the early 2000s, there have been 12 or 14 members; now, solely six stay: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal. I like that European thought, however I’m targeted on successful extra native audiences and creating a brand new type of hub by means of the establishment.
Vienna has an ideal custom of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century artwork however, in comparison with different cities, it has some lacunae when it comes to modern artwork. It’s the second largest German-speaking metropolis, however there isn’t any pictures market right here, there aren’t any industrial galleries coping with pictures. What I did at C/O Berlin was to consider methods to encourage industrial galleries and different establishments to interact with pictures. Right here, my intention is equally to convey pictures extra absolutely into the broader discourse of the industrial system.
CJ Foto Arsenal Wien is funded by the state. Might that be an issue for you?
FH Foto Arsenal Wien is one hundred pc publicly financed. There is no such thing as a mentality in Austria of personal cash or company funding to help this type of initiative, which might make cultural work fairly difficult. Right here, it’s understood that every thing may be very a lot supported by the federal government, simply as it’s understood how necessary tradition is to on a regular basis life. This is without doubt one of the causes it has been attention-grabbing for me to maneuver from Berlin to Vienna, to study from this tradition, which feels shut but in addition very completely different.
I’ve full freedom in what I do, however there’s at all times the query of why and the way a metropolis or a society ought to help an establishment like Foto Arsenal, and I need to make sure that there are folks coming by means of the doorways. I’ll at all times query how related we’re, what we’re wanted for: it’s necessary to maintain that in thoughts on the launch of a brand new place with a brand new infrastructure. Now we have to heat up the area earlier than we will go deeper into the discourse.
‘Magnum: A World of Images’ and ‘Simon Lehner: Clear Ideas, Clear Photos’ are on view at Foto Arsenal Wien from 22 March to 1 June
Principal picture: Marc Riboud, An American younger lady, Jan Rose Kasmir, confronts the American Nationwide Guard outdoors the Pentagon throughout the 1967 anti-Vietnam march, Washington DC, USA, 1967, gelatin silver print, 49 × 60 cm. Courtesy: © Marc Riboud / Fonds Marc Riboud au MNAAG/Magnum Photographs
