Ballet stars in front of the lens
Pit Bühler has made a name for himself as a performance arts photographer outside of Switzerland. Nzz 28.08.2018 | Text: Sabina South, Photo; Pit Bühler
Pit Bühler has also made a name for himself as a «performance arts» photographer outside Switzerland. Now the Zug native is exhibiting ten large-format pictures from his latest series in the Steinhausen community hall.
Leafing through Pit Bühler's portfolio, it is hard to escape the singularity of his motifs: The Zug native has spent years traveling the world to photograph a myriad of people. «They are always subjects that fascinate and inspire me. I really like getting to grips with foreign cultures and exciting people,» says Bühler. The artist, who lives in Steinhausen, says that it can sometimes take years from the initial fascination to a concrete image idea before he tackles a subject and turns it into a photo project. Photographs of the world's best dancers Bühler always finances and realizes the projects himself, thereby securing an artistic independence that is unmistakably manifested in his photographs. In collaboration with the venerable Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, the renowned Opera and Ballet Theatre of Belarus in Minsk and the Leningrad Center in St. Petersburg, he has spent the last three years taking pictures of the world's best ballet dancers, which can now be seen in his current ballet series «Ballet Perfection». «People who already had ambitions as small children, worked tirelessly towards them and finally achieved their goal; that fascinates me,» says Bühler. In this respect, he is probably closer to his protagonists than he would like to admit. Because Bühler spares no effort for his photos. Ten years ago, the 46-year-old made photography the focus of his life after putting a camera on his back and traveling 2,000 kilometers along the Amazon. The photos from this trip earned him an invitation from the Leipzig Academy of Art. He spent a year there as a guest of Helftied Strauss' master class, which at the time also included the Zug artist Markus Uhr. Bühler's demands on himself are now high and he leaves nothing to chance. Concise and sometimes dramatic lighting, open focal lengths, skillfully placed accents of sharpness and strong contrasts, with bright colors and unfathomably dark backgrounds often determine his picture composition.
The presidential lounge as a photo studio
Bühler's photos at the Bolshoi Theater were not taken during the performances, but in specially constructed studio sets. «I transformed the presidential lounge into a temporary photo studio to take portraits of the dance icons directly from the stage,» says Bühler. The dancers had visited him according to a precise schedule, between their performances. «Sometimes they only had a few seconds before they were called back on stage.» Pit Bühler's insistence on the quality and aesthetics of his pictures requires a lot of preparation before every photo trip: permits have to be obtained, theater directors and ballet masters have to be contacted, equipment has to be rented and transport has to be organized. «But the goodwill in Russia was always very great,» says Bühler. The artists are open and uncomplicated and the production costs are relatively low. Although only ever on short visits, other projects also emerged in parallel with the ballet series, including portrait series about circus performers, drag queens, Russian cowboys and war veterans, which were shown two years ago at a solo exhibition at the Leningrad Center in St. Petersburg. «When a 95-year-old doctor talks about his time in Stalingrad, it really gets to you,» says Bühler. And it is probably precisely because the stories and fates of his protagonists do not leave him cold that they feel at ease behind his lens and mutate from an anonymous physiognomy into an intimate work of art.
The vernissage will take place on September 1 at 5 p.m. in the community hall in Steinhausen and is open to the public. It will be accompanied by a dance performance. The book launch of the latest exhibition catalog «Ballet Perfection» will take place at the same time.
