Fotostiftung Schweiz

Audio guide through our temporary exhibitions. Welcome to Fotostiftung Schweiz !

A very warm welcome to the Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur! Let the audio guide steer you through our temporary exhibitions.

Did you know that …
… the Fotostiftung Schweiz is the oldest photography institution in Switzerland?
It was founded in 1971 under the name “Stiftung für die Photographie”. What seems self-evident today was a pioneering act at the time, as until then no one in Switzerland had bothered much about the preservation, research or exhibition of photographs. Since then the Fotostiftung Schweiz has communicated photographic work in more than two hundred exhibitions on its premises and as many abroad. Together with the Fotomuseum, the Fotostiftung has also gained an international reputation that is reflected, among other things, in its cooperation with museums throughout Europe.

… the Collection of the Fotostiftung Schweiz constitutes an important part of the visual memory of our country?
The Collection includes about 60,000 exhibition prints, 250,000 archive prints and more than one million negatives resp. slides – an incredibly rich source for the history of Switzerland and the history of photography in all its forms – artistic, documentary, applied and private. One important aim of the collection is to cover as many independent positions in, and different historical manifestations of photography as possible. Meantime the Association of Friends of the Fotostiftung Schweiz buys groups of work by photographers which enrich the contemporary Swiss photography landscape through their striking independent approaches.

… the Fotostiftung Schweiz plays a leading role in making collection holdings available online?
The Fotostiftung’s “Sammlung online” shows a cross-section of the whole of the history of photography in Switzerland from the mid-19th century to today. In the ever-growing catalogue there are currently more than 22,000 images from the core holdings as digital copies of originals present in the collection and the archives of the Fotostiftung Schweiz. The aim of this publicly accessible research database is to open a window on the Collection and anchor the photographs in the visual memory of the public by making them visibly accessible and by circulating them. Access is available through the website of the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Sammlung online.