WINTERTHUR.- Portraits play a major role in the work of Barbara Davatz (born 1944). For more than 40 years she has repeatedly devoted her attention to the question of how people can be captured and presented by means of a camera. What does a picture say about the person portrayed? Which photographs seem authentic? How much staging is permitted? And when does an image become a projection surface?

Her long-term study entitled “As Time Goes By”, which was completed in 2014 and has just recently been published in book form, is the centrepiece of the new exhibition at the Fotostiftung Schweiz. For that work, Barbara Davatz photographed selected couples from the Zurich scene at four different stages of their lives over a period of more than 30 years — a project that is unique in Swiss and in international photography and is being shown now for the first time in its entirety. This is not just a work about individuals and couples, about visible and invisible powers of attraction between people, it is also a study of how society and styles change — an impressive document of our time.

To complement it, the exhibition will also include other portrait series that indicate just how consistently and wilfully Barbara Davatz has pursued her course. Whether photographing the staff of a company, observing the similarity between twins, studying resemblances among family members or getting the employees of an international fashion house in front of the camera, Davatz takes those she portrays out of their everyday context so as to eliminate any form of distraction. She photographs them frontally using as neutral a lighting as possible. She also draws our full attention to the face and its expression, to the body and its bearing, to the clothing and the details of the outside appearance. We are invited to compare.

The sober, clear images are at the same time the fruit of great attention and perception. Those portrayed return the gaze of the viewers, touching them with their openness and vulnerability. Whoever gets involved in these images discovers much that is puzzling, mysterious and individual behind the precise and uniformly captured surface. Seeing and knowing, curiosity and knowledge, assertions and fantasies intermingle. “The emotional lies between the images, so to speak, in the imagined life-stories or in the memories that are awakened,” says Barbara Davatz. “Sometimes I find the way certain people look at the camera quite sensual, even erotic. When do people ever look into one another’s eyes as intensely? When they are in love!”