Helmut Schweizer - endeavours in a circus to take the same pictures ture at a different times

Helmut Schweizer is a postwar and contemporary German artist, born in 1946.

The 30.5 x 24 cm photo printed directly by the artist is glued to a white cardboard sheet 50 x 50 cm and was inserted inside a folder produced in 1976 to fund the Laboratorio di Via Maroncelli in Milan. A self-managed space by a group of international artists among whom John Armleder, Olivier Mosset, Helmut Schweizer, Nicol Gravier, Ugo Carrega and others.

Between 1970 and 1976, Helmut Schweizer developed his photographic series Aktions (Actions). Through over one hundred tableaux in three parts, the artist stages everyday situations, often surprising, sometimes subtly absurd. Aktions represents one of the key contributions to conceptual photography of the 1970s.

Fifty years after its creation, the series is here published in its entirety for the first time. The book is based on a thorough study of the artist’s archive, revealing a corpus of works that stands out for its conceptual rigor and visual peculiarity. An extensive essay by the curator Steffen Siegel offers an in-depth analysis of the series and highlights Schweizer’s political concern: how can the relationship between humans and nature be rethought beyond the hierarchies of subject and object, domination and submission?

Helmut Schweizer lives and works as a visual artist in Düsseldorf. Steffen Siegel is a professor of Theory and History of Photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen.