Walter Pfeiffer “Polaroids 1972–2021 (Part II)”

The second part of “Polaroids 1972 – 2021” in Milan, by Swiss artist Walter Pfeiffer. Devised as an exhibition across the gallery’s two spaces, the first exhibition opened in Zurich earlier this year in May. The exhibitions focus on Pfeiffer’s polaroid works from 1972 to present day, which have only rarely been displayed, most notably at Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris in 2004 and within the context of his sketchbooks for his major solo presentation at Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2008.

The exhibitions in Zurich and Milan are the first comprehensive showing dedicated solely to this aspect of Pfeiffer’s photographic practice. For five decades, Pfeiffer has developed a multifaceted practice which bridges photography, film and drawing. Distinguished for his candid photographs of friends, acquaintances and lovers, alongside his colour intensive still lives, Pfeiffer is often attributed with anticipating the diaristic and natural style of a younger generation of practitioners such as Jack Pierson, Wolfgang Tillmans or Ryan McGinley. Pfeiffer can be seen as a contemporary to the likes of Peter Hujar as well as descendant of the painter Paul Cadmus or the photographer Herbert List, whose observations of the male form and compositions in particular bear a certain kinship with that of Pfeiffer. Since the early 2000s, notably after the publication Welcome Aboard, Photographs 1980-2000 with Edition Patrick Frey, Walter Pfeiffer has also started working with international magazines, particularly in fashion, for publications such as i-D, Butt, VogueParis, Self Service, Fantastic Man, W, Aperture, and others.