Beat Streuli was born in 1957 in Altdorf in the canton of Zurich in Switzerland. From 1977 to 1980 he attended the für Gestaltung school in Bâle and in Zurich from 1977 to 1980, then from de 1981 to 1987, he lives in Berlin where he studies at the Hochschule der Künste. In the nineteen eighties, he obtains many distinctions¹. And the award of a variety of grants makes it possible for him to go on trips abroad – he goes to  La Cité des Arts and La Fondation Cartier, in Paris ; to l'Istituto Svizzero in Italy in 1988-89 and to the P.S.1 in New York in 1991, 1992-93 and 1994. Since 1990, Beat Streuli lives between Zurich, New York and Düsseldorf.

Beat Streuli has been a keen photographer since his adolescence. During his painting studies at the at the École de Beaux-Arts, he tones down his photographic pursuits opting instead to research plastics, making collages from images he finds – making posters. At the end of these academic years he returns to photography. Then his travels and stays abroad in the big cities begin, first with Paris and then with Rome in 1988, which led to the first publication which was dedicated to his urban photos. He continues with the big cities and with portraits of the young city dwellers in images where the light is given some contrast, in black and white and in colour (around 1994), that the large format magnifies. One selection of photographs depicts a selection where he captures the undifferentiated waves of a human tide. His choice of innumerable view points with the telephoto lens is certainly reflected in the quality of the images, but so too is the wish to deprive these images of their detail and beauty.

Next he turns to portraits. The plastic qualities and the subjects of his portraits contradict a singular and personalised representation. The figures studied are devoid of expression and close to what is termed natural expression. The expressive potential of the figures is not brought out.
The figures do not emerge from anonymity, but form a surface and belong to the photo in the same way as the other coloured shapes which make up the photo. In these faces, Beat Streuli is not interested in capturing an expression that reflects the individual, he looks to capture a superficiality of things and beings. Moreover, the sensual qualities and the wealth of contrasts resulting from the use of slow-exposure, close textured film assures a surface capture which prevents the face from being the subject.

The surface capture means that the signs that distinguish one photo from the next evaporate and give them a generic identity which goes beyond conventional boundaries and which seems to unite
the young people from all the cities. These signs however accord to the signified, so even when they are erased the make way for a viewing that is both intuitive and analytical which detects the meaning in the surface. When viewing you recognise, almost unconsciously and perhaps through other images, through a few details, through an indivisible whole, the identity of the place. These are the invariable (techniques and aesthetics) in the work of Beat Streuli who universalises appearance.

These aesthetic qualities, this non-sense for identifying something, and the sizes of the shots make it possible for Streuli's photographs to operate a semantic shift and to play on two stools. By being put up in places normally reserved for advertising, the photographs become a surface for projection, like advert photos. The large presentation size and the context bring it nearer to advertising and provoke a viewing that is not limited to the places established for the purpose of communicating contemporary art. These portraits are accessible to the intended viewers. The shots are returned to their urban context².

There is only one transition from photography to film projection. This transition happened at the end of the nineteen eighties first in the form of live music performances and slide projections with Christoph Gallio (between 1998 and 1992). The first slide show which was designed like an installation/exhibition, titled “In their own image” was held in 1991 in New York at the P.S. 1 Museum. The projections show a chain of snap shots which allow no instant or no surface. Already exhibited the photographs on a scale 1 :1 (sometimes a bit more) put the viewer in a 'natural' size relationship which throws the analytical viewing and invites a more direct confrontation. The sides are projected onto the whole wall of the exhibition hall . The effect is monumental and captures the person in the projection, in the same way as Kunstverein of Stuttgart did in 1996, where the slides are projected in cross fade on the four walls of the hall from the floor to the ceiling – the viewer is almost immersed in the crowd. The view experiences the feeling of the crowd, its connotations – and what it represents.


While the cross fade slide projections evoke the cinema, the timing is different. The time between each of the slide slow imaged is not the same as a film in a film which would be deconstructed or slowed down to play around with the illusion. No, blown up between two static images to give them a movement and assign them in a kaleidoscopic continuum, it highlights the abstraction of the images more effectively.

Whilst the photographs themselves succeed in evoking reality, this is partially down to the allusions - which reproduce fragmentarily the complexity of the reality. The use of the video camera makes it possible to capture a situation in its entirety in real time³.

Video is used by Beat Streuli in 1994. Living in New York he created a photo series of passers by, in the streets, recreating the unique Manhattan atmosphere. The people living on Allen Street are mainly young and coloured, more mixed than fifth avenue and more different still from sixth avenue. This sampling doesn't claim to be representative of Manhattan life its documentary value is weak and doesn't analyse behaviour or unique indigenous traits . The same goes for the videos filmed in the mundane locations in other towns. The pedestrians of New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Düsseldorf, Glasgow, Tarragon and Tours unknowingly lend their faces to the sequences which are always filmed using the same technical principles with a stationary camera a static shot whatever the subject – the crowd moving around the centre of one of these city centres or portraits of faces alone like Tarragon (1996). When they are exhibited with photos the videos show the context in which the photos were taken. In this sense, they are a reservoir of possible images.

The video makes it possible to capture real-time light changes, the erratic city rhythm, an infinite amount of mannerisms, looks, dialogues and the finer details and particular sounds of the city in question. This palette of nuances traces the 'everyday' of urban life and above all makes us feel part of the geometry of relationships that the look can , for a second create, or a state where things appear to us which aren't actually there, or further still give us a 'direct' insight into reality , which is but a mere mediatisation. In fact Streuli's choice of techniques (one static camera) reduces the sight of the medium in order to allow what appears to be a fragment of life, a punctuation of reality to manifest itself.

In his recent videos⁴, Beat Streuli returns to the medium using a slow-down technique. The use of this technique, which suspends time and movement, conveys the secondary images (more than the pixels) and draws are attention to the mediation, taking us from a state of contemplation. This sudden process suspension of the movement of the bodies and slow-down of the face image denotes a shift back to the middle-ground on the part of Streuli, echoing one of his central photographic themes.

Time, duration and movement which has already been shown to be at work in his slide projections are all crucial in his videos. The coming and goings of the passers by takes blace in a static time – that being the time of the film itself, a fragment which doen't overrun an which because of this establishes no links with a before or an after. Also, space, an attribute linked fundamentally with movement finds no extension off camera, as there there is just one filmed are, filmed in one go. The actions do not go beyond the screen. They tell no story of elsewhere. They produce their own gestural, just as time produces it own duration, finding no narrative extension. If there is an event it is the duration of the image itself and the narrative expectation that is never met by a story.

This films which relate an instant that is brought “to” reality more than it is brought “from” reality and is a reflection of the way in which we live our lives and in an opposite way the images make us realise the things we do on an everyday basis without realising we are doing them. It shows reality as close up as possible without turning it into a documetary, only showing reality, making us feel reality in all its complexity. It captures reality in real time and in a static shot without direction or mixing. Photos, slide shows, and video are well suited this project. (IAP)


¹ In 1980, 1983, et 1984 Grant from the canton de Zurich, in 1985, 1986 and 1988, Grant from the Swiss federation of fine-arts, and in 1986, grant from Kiefer Hablitzel. In 1994, he is awarded the Montres Breguet prize and again in 1997, He is laureat with a grant from Landis & Gyr which includes a work shop in London.

² : Highlights:
museum in progress, Visitors, Vienne (Austria), 1996 – first installation bill boards
Cityspace, Copenhagen (Denmark), 1996 - first installation windows
Framed Area, Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam (Holland), 1997 - bill boards

in situ (posters) Enghien (France), 1997, 1998 - posters in bus shelter
Everyday, Sydney Biennial, Sydney (Australia) 1998 - bill boards
Düsseldorfer Sparkasse, permanent window exhibition, Düsseldorf (Germany), 2000
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, july 1999, Chicago (USA), 1999 - windows

³ Beat Streuli talks of his transition to video in the following interview:
BRAUN Alexander, '”Braun, Wurm, Streuli - Videos und Gespräche”, Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Nuremberg (Germany), November 2000

⁴ Vidéos filmed in 1999 at Shinjuku-ku and Düsseldorf, Heinrich-Heine-Allee