SALZBURG.- As the granddaughter of a “Pied-Noir” (a term used to describe the French population in Algeria during the violent French colonial rule from 1830 to 1962), Margot Wallard seeks to reflect the fluidity and mutability of memory and to expand it through a new perspective.
During her visits to Oran between 2018 and 2020, she explored the city with her camera and, while her biographical search for traces of the past, encountered a new generation: present, complex, and self-determined. This resulted in portrait series centered around the Bonbon Café, she photographed street scenes, urban vegetation, and the still-evident traces of the colonial past in the cityscape.
In her exhibition, Margot Wallard interweaves her grandmother’s photo archive with her own images from Algeria and with photographs she took of her grandmother during her final years in France.
The oldest surviving photograph was made by Nicéphore Niépce (1765–1833), marking the beginning of an epochal media invention that, originating with photography, has expanded into the broad field of “lens-based media” and continues to shape our perception of the world—today more than ever. His View from the Window at Le Gras (1826) has become an iconic metaphor for a functionality inherent to the new medium: visually fixing the outside world through an apparently objective apparatus, thereby making it comprehensible in a new way.
We want to celebrate the milestone of “200 Years of Photography” with an exhibition that offers an engaging and humorous glimpse into the studios of Salzburg photographers. The exhibition concept is based on an invitation to each artist to identify the earliest work within their own oeuvre and make it available for the exhibition, either as a vintage print or as a reconstruction.
The curatorial idea is founded on the assumption that this approach will make visible and open to discussion the diverse starting points and artistic concepts from which each photographer’s subsequent body of work developed. The number of participants will determine the form of the presentation: a “Salon de Paris” of the 19th century, characterized by an excessive spatial and conceptual concentration of highly diverse personalities and formal approaches.
2026 also marks the 45th anniversary of FOTOHOF, which has thus accompanied almost a quarter of the period since the invention of the medium. We are delighted to celebrate this (small) anniversary with a kind of community project bringing together Salzburg’s photographic artists.
With earliest works by: Anna Aicher, Rolf Aigner, Sebastian Albert, Motahar Amiri, Valentin Backhaus / Katrin Froschauer / Christian Zwerschina, Ruth Bayer, Alba Malika Belhadj Merzoug, Franz Bergmüller, Elisabeth Czihak, Mateusz Dworczyk, Michaela Fellner, Gertrud Fischbacher, Karin Fisslthaler, Vincent Forstenlechner, Ira Grünberger, Ilse Haider, Barbara Holub, Dieter Huber, Rainer Iglar, Kurt Kaindl, Helena Kalleitner, Marion Kalter, Gerhard Kaserer, Vera Kern, Gerhard Kowald, Sigrid Kurz, Kai Kuss, Benjamin Laabmayr, Sigrid Langrehr, Ulrike Lienbacher, Michael Mauracher, Stella Meyer, Selma Mierl, Reinhart Mlineritsch, Bernhard Müller, Gregor Neuerer, Dirk Obracay, Hanns Otte, Karin Peyker, Andrew Phelps, Stefanie Pirker, Hans Pollhammer, Sigrid Riepl, Joyce Rohrmoser, Birgit Sattlecker, Patrick Schaudy, Eva-Maria Schitter, Elisabeth Schmirl, Werner Schnelle, Peter Schreiner, Sabine Schwaighofer, Herman Seidl, Annelies Senfter, Rudolf Strobl, Wolfgang Thaler, Nadine Weixler, Josefa Wiedemann, Katharina Maria Wimmer, Elisabeth Wörndl, Stefan Zenzmaier, Johannes Ziegler.
