The Fisherman
The Fisherman is a photographic series made around the harbour area of Essaouira in Morocco, during the last week of the Ramadan in 2016. Formerly known as Mogador, this city in the western Moroccan region of Marrakesh-Safi, on the Atlantic coast, was Morocco’s principal port until the end of the nineteenth century. Its endless labyrinthine alleyways still bear the memories of colonialism, diplomacy, and trade—but the region is deeply affected by urbanization and global economic shifts. Walking around the fish market and the old harbour, along the numberless blue fishing boats impregnated with the smell of fish and oysters, exploring the margins of the city and its shores, this place has brought back memories of Brazil, my homeland.
Published by Polka Dots Editions in June 2017. 1st edition, English. 62 pages, 17 colour photographs, 14.5 x 19 cm. Edition of 400. With a text by Julieta Schildknecht.
The Yellow Boy
In The Yellow Boy, a young man holds the globe and reflects unsympathetically, in a parable for the state of the world today. The hard contrast in the photographs emphasises the almost masculine gestures, posture, and characteristics of the boy in what is both a political and a romantic stance. In a mirror to The Eliot Twins series, The Yellow Boy is a nostalgic reflection – the fragility and emotional countering of time gain here a more political stand, doubled by the use of analogue techniques and outdated film. The project is accompanied by a poem titled “4D” written by John Patrick O’Brien, a teacher and writer who lives in São Paulo, Brazil.
Published by Polka Dots Editions in May 2017. 1st edition, English. 8 pages, 8 colour photographs, 34 x 47 cm. Edition of 400. With a poem by John Patrick O’Brien.
After Howl
After Howl is a photographic project inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Howl’ written in 1955, a manifesto that questions the values and morals of the post-war generation. The project contains a series of 75 photographs made as a journal in the same room, at different hours and throughout different days during one entire year. It is an expression of the artist’s tireless experimentation with and appropriation of the photographic process, exploring the boundaries and limits of the photographic medium. The photographs create a lyrical situation that reflects on the relationships with the visual and the verbal, reforming the hollow sense of time, place, identity, and subjectivity. The artist alters the literal grounds of Ginsberg’s poem to reclaim its purity and speak of an intimate sense of time and perception. In its meditation on death and morality, space and time, ethics and existence, the photograph creates a liberating tension to challenge fixed interpretations.
Published by Polka Dots Editions in July 2016. 1st edition, English. 60 pages, 28 colour photographs, 14.5 x 19 cm. Edition of 300. With an essay by Sabin Bors.
The Eliot Twins
In her series The Eliot Twins, Julieta Schildknecht suspends time to the point of nostalgia. “The images of the twin girls, photographed sometimes together sometimes apart, fade away from us. They are out of our sharpest visual reach, for we cannot fathom them completely or their exact emotional state. Through countless multiple exposures and repeated photographing of the figures whilst in motion, a mesmerizing effect is manifested portraying the girls as almost apparitions of themselves. Schildknecht’s work is acutely tuned in to the palette of the Cibachrome paper’s blues and pinks. Because of this and through this process, the images become delicate, humming with energy and enhanced and enlivened by these very particular hues.” (Lou Proud)
Published by Polka Dots Editions in May 2016. 1st edition, English. 8 pages, 7 colour photographs, 34 x 47 cm. Edition of 300. With essays by Lou Proud and Julieta Schildknecht.
Stone Valley
Stone Valley is a project comprising photographs the artist took between 2003 and 2010 in the area of Lower Engadine, a long valley in the eastern Swiss Alps. Surrounded by high mountains on all sides and famous for its landscapes, the Lower Engadine is a place rich in cultural and natural history that is part of a carefully preserved and respected ecological system. It is a place of cultural and natural consistency that informs a sense of geo-cultural duration, cohesion, and admiration which Schildknecht explores in relation to her Swiss and Brazilian origins. The photographs are part of the artist’s personal archive and compose a metaphoric dialogue around social and cultural contrasts. They invite the viewer to question our relation to nature and how nature serves man’s functional purposes.
Published by Polka Dots Editions in January 2016. 1st edition, English. 16 pages, 7 colour photographs, 21 x 25 cm. Edition of 300. With an essay by Sabin Bors.
Engiadina und Val Müstair: Eine Galerie mit 81 Porträts
A counterpoint to the image of tourism advertising: people from the Engadine and the Münstertal in picture and word. A pharmacist, a biologist, a restorer, a photographer, a bookshop, a professor, a priest, a forest engineer from the Engadine and the Münstertal. Who are the most eminent emotionally, professionally or otherwise? What is the role of language, tradition, nature and the environment? The photographer Julieta Schildknecht and the novelist Jachen Curdin Arquint were looking for the people who shape the spiritual and cultural life of the terra ladina. This book portrays 81 personalities. It is common to all, that they speak at home Romansh – rumantsch ladin – and have a close relationship with the terra ladina, in a different picture of the inner life of muond rumantsch.
Published by Scheidegger & Spiess in 2015. 1st edition, German. 320 pages, 1 colour and 202 b/w photographs, 19 x 27 cm. Co-authored by Jachen Curdin Arquint. ISBN 978-3-85881-460-9.
Giacomo Joyce
Giacomo Joyce is part of a collection of books and objects relating to James Joyce. The collection ranges from books the text and illustrations of which enter a dialogue with Joyce’s work, to objets d’art which take as their starting point the book as an object. All books and objects are unique and have been made specially for this collection by artists including John Christie, Ian Tyson, Béatrice Coron, Verena Schindler, Sabine Golde, Manfred Bleffert, Karin Goetz, Ton Frenken, Jacques Pourcher, Klaus Zylla, Harald Kröner, and many others. As a bibliophile, Leo Koenders († August 2011) wanted to start a new collection and commissioned artists more than 20 years ago, who would assemble livres d’artiste with reference to the work of Joyce.
Unique book published in 2005 as part of the collection of Leo Koenders.
24hs Lighthouse
The photographs in this series, 24hs Lighthouse – long lasting life during 24hours, were made in the context of the Lighthouse Gala Evening. The Zurich Lighthouse is a hospice for incurably sick and terminal patients in search of their rest, which at the time hosted HIV patients only. The hospice is run by an interdisciplinary team that offers holistic and personal care, making this the final home of its residence. The photographs depict the inhabitants and their autonomous activities, in intimate portraits that reveal the openness and honesty of those who prepare for their last departure. A text accompanies the photographs to mark the beauty of transgression and our silent expectations, moments before we acknowledge the passage of our time.
The book was commissioned by Lighthouse Palliative Care Clinic in Zurich in 2003.
Neue Frauen: Transsexuelle Porträtiert von Julieta Schildknecht
This series of photographs seeks to demystify the taboo of transsexuality by approaching the subjects in their most intimate moment to reveal their beauty, kindness, and openness – their strength and resistance against the pressures and stereotypes of society. The photographs are an image of admiration, companion, and respect for the essential femininity of the subjects. The book includes a text written by famous German transsexual writer Waltraud Schiffels.
The book was published by DU and entwuerfe (2002), 2008 and WOZ (2003), 2012. 2nd edition, German. 164 pages, 56 b/w photographs and 6 colour photographs. With contributions by Waltraud Schiffels, Sandra Muster and Julieta Schildknecht.
