SALZBURG.- Lisl Ponger (b. Nuremberg, DE, 1947) launched her career as a film and photography artist in the early 1970s. In staged photographic pieces such as La Catrina (2013) and Teilnehmende Beobachterin (2016), Ponger pinpoints the ways in which stereotypes, racist ideas, and scopic constructions that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century have persisted and even thrived in photography. She is also a collector, gathering objects of Western vernacular culture and trinkets from tourist souvenir shops that reveal the Western engagement with foreign cultures for her fictional Museum MuKul (Museum for Foreign and Familiar Cultures). Divided into three sections, her exhibition Professione: fotografa showcases numerous major photographic tableaus and a selection of early films as well as objects and sculptures from the Museum MuKul. Also on display is the installation The Master Narrative und Don Durito, which Ponger created for the reopening of the Weltmuseum, Vienna, in 2017.

The title she chose for her show is an allusion to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 motion picture Professione: reporter, which examines epistemological problems and questions of personal responsibility as well as the relationship between the artist and his creation. “As we worked closely with Lisl Ponger to design this extensive survey exhibition, we were struck again and again by the extraordinary and interdisciplinary complexity of her creative thinking. I am also especially pleased that she produced a new series of photographs for Salzburg that will make its public debut in the show,” notes Christiane Kuhlmann, curator of photography and media art and a member of the jury for the 2017 Otto Breicha Award for Photography.

2017 Otto Breicha Award for Photography—Jury statement
The Museum der Moderne Salzburg was one of the first institutions in Austria to promote photography as an art form. The foundation for its extensive photography collection was laid in 1981, two years before the museum opened its doors to the public in 1983. With the holdings of the Austrian Federal Photography Collection, which have been entrusted to its care, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg has the world’s single largest collection of art photography from Austria.

Since 1983, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg has given out a biennial photography award. Co-funded by the Breicha family and billed as the “Otto Breicha Award for Photography—Museum der Moderne Salzburg” since 2007, the award honors an artist born or based in Austria. It includes a prize money of € 5,000 and a solo exhibition. In a statement, the judges—Christa Breicha, Leo Kandl (winner of the 2015 Otto Breicha Award), Monika Faber (Institut Bonartes, Vienna), and Christiane Kuhlmann (Museum der Moderne Salzburg)—explain their decision to give the 2017 award to Lisl Ponger:

“Lisl Ponger’s oeuvre stands out for its abundance of themes and techniques. A photographer, experimental filmmaker, media artist, and writer, she uses both still and moving images to explore the culture of ‘foreignness,’ scrutinizing different ideas of what makes a place home and questioning the tenor of ethnographic displays in museums and exhibitions. With its highly original content and visual aesthetic, her work is unique in the canon of Austrian art.”

The publication accompanying the exhibition will be presented at an event held in cooperation with FOTOHOF Salzburg on 23 February 2019, at 2 p.m. Lisl Ponger will be present.