For more content of near’s past, please go to the archive section

Zürich
Kassette, Wolfbachstrasse 9
1 June 2016, from 18.00

Lovers of contemporary photography? Compulsive collector? A passion for beautiful objects? The first limited edition of the series ‘17 shots in a box’ has arrived! The box combines 17 photos in postcard format with current works from the work of near. photographers. Discover this coprodution between near. and Grussformat over a drink, which also offers an opportunity for exchange.

With contributions by Sophie Brasey, Olivier Lovey, Diego Saldiva, Véronique Portal, Laurence Rasti, Sophie Huguenot, Mathieu Bernard-Reymond, Murielle Michetti, Brigitte Lustenberger, Gian Paul Lozza, Léonore Baud, Mathilde Magnée, Dom Smaz, Lucas Olivet, Roberto Greco, Fabian Unternährer et Caroline Aubert-Neulas.

The postcard set ‘17 shots in a box’ #1 is still available.
→ have a look here 

near. meets Locus Solus. In mid-January 2017, a new art place was born in Catherine Monney's private apartment. Between 1987 and 1991 the now gallery owner  held the legendary artist-run space M2, in Vevey with well-known artists from the French-speaking scene such as Alain Huck, Robert Ireland, Jean Crotti and Jean-Luc Manz. Today, Catherine Monney offers her walls to artists who love to read. Each exhibition is thus accompanied by two events related to literature, art or theater.

Since 2018, near. proposes discussions and meetings with famous photographers in collaboration with the Photography School of Vevey. ‘Photographer’s Talk’ was launched in May 2018 with a discussion between Geert Goiris, photographer from Antwerp, Belgium and Raphaël Biollay, curator for Images Festival in Vevey, Switzerland. They both displayed/showcased their work and debated on the role that schools play in photography.

Arles (FR)
Les Rencontres d’Arles
Saturday 7 July 2018, 11.00,
Présence Suisse
at the ‘nonante-neuf’, Croisière

At the invitation of ‘Présence Suisse’, near. showcases its work and the work of its members and launches on this occasion the brand new website. Let’s toast to the new digital age of near.

near. was invited to the 5th edition of the Verzasca Photo Festival. Fortunately, three near.-photographers were selected for the main exhibition this year: Eva Lauterlein, Brigitte Lustenberger and Roshan Adhihetty. We also did portfolio reviews during the fesitval and presented the work of our association.

Curatorial intersections at the shared space between human and AI.
Interactive projection hosted by STADIO, as part of Images Vevey 2018.
Thanks to Gaël Hugo (onemorestud.io) for coding and teaching the AI.

Images by near.
Saturday 15th September 2018
Vernissage 6 pm DJ + drinks + food
STADIO, rue de la Valsainte 11, 1800 Vevey

More information: near.li / stadio.ch / images.ch

Arles (FR)
Les Rencontres d’Arles
2 July until 23 September 2018,
Présence Suisse
at the ‘nonante-neuf’, Croisière

For the whole duration of the festival, near. will be displaying its publications as well as various books of our members. Come and see us!

We are very happy to invite you to the second Photographer's Talk for 2018, with Asger Carlsen (photographer, Denmark) and Danaé Panchaud (curator, Photoforum Pasquart, Bienne, Switzerland)

Thursday 6th of December, 6pm at CEPV, Vevey
Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey, avenue Nestlé 1

Discover their work and their thoughts on photography. We hope to see you there!
Discussion in English, q&a in English and/or French
Followed by an aperitif

→ share the PDF-flyer
asgercarlsen.com
danaepanchaud.net

After a busy year with a lot of changes we are very happy to present many new members on our new website. Welcome !

We are trying to keep up with all the requests and collaborations and we are glad to say that Images Vevey, Arles, Verzasca and the talk at CEPV were great.
But the year is not over and, even if not everything is exactly as planned, as promised we are thinking about the future: ‘Crit Group’, the ‘near. award‘ meetings and more. Stay tuned ! Also, the General Assembly will take place in January; come, so we can meet and share our ideas for future projects.

In the meantime, the next talk with Asger Carlsen and Danaé Panchaud is very soon, (6th of Decemeber in Vevey). Venez écouter et boire un verre avec nous.

à bientôt
near. committee

We are very happy to invite you to the third Photographer’s Talk of near. with Laura Letinsky (photographer, Canada) and Victoria Mühlig (curator, Musée d’art de Pully, Switzerland)
Thursday 14th of February, 6pm at CEPV, Vevey

Discover their work and their thoughts on photography. We hope to see you there!
Discussion in English, q&a in English and/or French
Followed by an aperitif

→ share the PDF-flyer
lauraletinsky.com
 

Great afternoon in Lausanne visiting near. members Delphine Burtin and Thomas Brasey studios, with the CEPV students. Thank you to their teachers Catherine Leutenegger and David Gagnebin de-Bons.

Presenting near. publications and books of near. members at Photobooks Switerland in Biel at Photoforum Pasquart.

Many near. members invited for the round tables and portfolio reviews, check out the program!

www.facebook.com/photobooksswitzerland/
www.photoforumpasquart.ch/en/event/photobooks-switzerland/

We are very happy to announce 17 shots #2, a special-edition postcard set, curated by Céline Eidenbenz, Victoria Mühlig and Anja Radamirovitch in occasion of the Salon Suisse at the Venice Biennale 2019 on the theme «slow».

Presenting images of near. members: Roshan Adhihetty, Sophie Brasey, Anna-Tia Buss, Fred Csupor, Tomasz Fall, Stéphanie Gygax, Yann Haeberlin, Vincent Jendly, Jonas Kambli, Eva Lauterlein, Kostas Maros, Jennifer Niederhauser Schlup, Christian Nilson, Antigoni Papantoni, Igor Ponti, Laurence von der Weid and Tomas Wüthrich.
The selection was made based on the work of all members.

From now on you can order your postcard set. It costs CHF 17 plus postage
(we will send you an invoice with your order). Limited edition!
 

If you are in Venice, come to the opening May 11th from 5pm
Salon Suisse Pro Helvetia, Accademia di belle arti,
Ex ospedale degli incurabili, Dorsoduro 423, Venezia

More

near. member Léa Girardin has invited us to a guided tour of the exhibition at Photo Basel. Thursday June 13th 2019 at 6:30 pm. All members are welcome, its free, but only 30 places are available — please apply (sending us an email) before May 20th.  If you can’t come that day but want to visit on an other day we can get you a 50% discount, also you need to apply before May 20th.

Thursday, July 4 2019, 19:30-21:30
Espace nonante-neuf, Croisière, Arles

—

At the invitation of ‘Présence Suisse’, near. swiss association for contemporary photography will launch the near. prize during the 2019 edition of the Rencontres d’Arles.

With the idea of developing additional support for the association’s photographers, near. launches the near. Prize, an annual award aimed at providing a financial incentive to encourage production and foster new ideas. Each year, a specific theme will be chosen by the committee and all near. members will be invited and encouraged to participate and share their views on the subject.

Join us at espace nonante-neuf for a festive evening in collaboration with YET magazine and ECAL.

crit group #1 in Zürich, with Sascha Renner
Wednesday 04 September, 2019

How do photos in a publication or exhibition tell a story? If you ask yourself this question in the midst of your current photographic work, then join the crit group of near.

In a small group - accompanied by curator Sascha Renner - you present your «work in progress». Inputs and discussion then follow in the plenary session. The goal: With the feedback from the round, you can sharpen and advance your photo series in terms of storytelling.

Sascha Renner: Deputy Director, Curator at Fotostiftung Schweiz. Director of COALMINE Forum for Documentary Photography in Winterthur.
fotostiftung.ch / coalmine.ch

Location: Zürich
Date: Wednesday 04 September, 2019
Time: 9:00 to 13:00
Costs: near-members CHF 25 /
non-members CHF 50
Number of participants: max. 5 persons
(near-members have priority)
Language: depending on participants
Registration: by 18 August to info@near.li

We will be in Sonogno for the festival.
Friday Sept. 6 at 1:30 pm near. talk with members Isabelle Blanc, Thomas Brasey and Yann Laubscher.
Saturday Sept 7 (morning) portfolio reviews.
See you in Ticino!
www.verzascafoto.com

Open call*
Deadline October 1, 2019

With the idea of developing additional support for the association’s photographers, near. launches the near. prize, an annual award aimed at providing a financial incentive to encourage production and foster new ideas. Each year, a specific theme is chosen by the committee. This year’s theme is under the notion of “balance”.
Participation in the near. prize is reserved exclusively for photographers who are members of the association. All near. photographers are therefore invited to apply.
The jury for the near. prize consists of three members of the near. family chosen each year by the committee. The composition of the jury this year is: Lydia Dorner, Curator Assistant at the Musée de l’Elysée, Nathalie Herschdorfer, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle and Salvatore Vitale, Editor in Chief of YET magazine.

The winner of the near. prize 2019 will be awarded 1000 CHF in cash to support his/her work, the publication of the awarded project in the next issue of YET magazine and a free one-year near. membership.

Application form here

* the near. prize is reserved exclusively for the members of the association.
Next deadline to become a near. member is September 1, 2019

Save the date!
Talk with Elisa Rusca and near. members Aline d’Auria, Gian Paolo Minelli, Igor Ponti and Salvatore Vitale at Biennale dell’immagine Chiasso
in collaboration with Cons Arc / Galleria
 

Tuesday October 29.2019
6:30 pm (followed by aperitivo)
at Cons Arc / Galleria
Via Gruetli 1
6830 Chiasso
(talk in italian)

www.consarc.ch
www.biennaleimmagine.ch
 

The winner of the first edition of the near. prize is Malgorzata Stankiewicz. Congratulations!
 

The near. prize is an annual award aimed at providing a financial incentive to encourage production and foster new ideas. This year, the winner will be awarded by 1000 CHF in cash to support his/her work, a publication of the awarded project in the next issue of YET magazine and a free one-year near. membership.

The jury of the prize, composed of Lydia Dorner, Curator Assistant at the Musée de l’Elysée, Nathalie Herschdorfer, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle and Salvatore Vitale, Editor-in-chief of YET magazine, went through the applications and selected a winner after a discussion that took place on Monday, November 11.

Here are the words of the jury:
“This work has an eye-catching aesthetic. The artist has developed an interesting process in both landscape photography and image making. Landscapes, and in parallel image making, show that balance - the topic of the competition - is very fragile and can be transformed (destroyed) quickly. There is an analogy between the destruction of the image and the destruction of the landscape. Working in the darkroom and making large-scale prints with physical and chemical manipulations, Malgorzata created a visually strong series on climate change as stated in the captions of the works. The jury chose this artist because her series is quite unique - both experimental and environmentally engaged”.

www.near.li/malgorzata-stankiewicz
www.yet-magazine.com
www.malgorzatastankiewicz.com

Image: Untitled (2017 Was California’s Largest And Most Destructive Fire Season on Record),  from the series ‘Lassen’ © Malgorzata Stankiewicz

AI is near. x LabElysée
An exploration of the possible future of curation Curatorial intersections at the shared space between human and AI.
Presentation at What's Next in Aarau of our new project in collaboration with LabElysée planned for 2020.

From January 29 to May 3, 2020 at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne.
Opening 28 January 2020 from 6pm

A project developed by near., the LabElysée and Gaël Hugo (one more studio).

What happens when the Musée de l'Elysée meets near. in order to question Swiss photography through the prism of machine learning?

Initiated in 2018 under the name «AI is near», the project allowed visitors to discover the work of the association's photographers through a choice of keywords detected by algorithms. In this second chapter entitled «Artificial Intersections», the Musée de l'Elysée and the association near. are joining forces to offer a new corpus of several thousand images from the Musée de l'Elysée's collection of Swiss photographs and the photographs of near's members. As in the first issue, the computer analyses the content of the images in order to index, compare and sort this new database by keywords.

Invited to select a keyword or submit an image from their smartphone, visitors participate in the curatorial process between human and machine. The result, which is then displayed live on the screens, gives a glimpse of the potential of the learning machine as a curator. Why not ask the machine to organise a landscape or portrait exhibition? Can we compete with a machine capable of (re)knowing in detail the images of a corpus as vast as that of one of the most important museums entirely devoted to photography? Throughout the three months of the exhibition, the intersections generated by this interactive experience are recorded in order to keep a trace of them and thus map the exploration of the database.

We are very pleased to invite you to our next talk with Elina Brotherus (photographer, Finland) and Marie DuPasquier (curator Display, Berlin).

Wednesday 12 Feb. 2020
6:30 pm, aula CEPV, Vevey
Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey avenue Nestlé 1

Talk in french q&a in english and/or french.

www.elinabrotherus.com
www.display-berlin.com

‘Why Not’, 2018, from the series Meaningless Work, © Elina Brotherus
Marie DuPasquier at Display (courtesy BerlinArtInstitute)
Portrait Elina Brotherus © Paavo Lehtonen, 2018