Following his design studies at the Basel School of Art, Christian Vogt took up photography in the 1960s. He became assistant to the renowned American photographer Will McBride. Over the course of his career, the artist won numerous awards, including the Triennale Internationale de la Photographie de Fribourg in 1975, and the Kulturpreis der Stadt Basel sixteen years later.
Through Christian Vogt’s photographic eye, an intimacy is revealed. The viewer becomes an actor in the photographic scenes captured through the photographer’s lens. Whether in black and white or colour, the artist’s images capture the melancholy of time as it passes. He even compares them to haikus – short Japanese poems. On charcoal and silver prints, the artist freezes the time of a bygone moment.
A stickler for detail, Christian Vogt emphasises not the image as such, but the story behind it. Here, the perception of reality is questioned. Desire is one of the main driving forces behind his work. Long compared to a nude photographer, the artist reveals not simply exaggerated nudity, but the language and meaning it evokes.
His photographic works Self Release, About the Price of Freedom of Not Belonging Anywhere and Slip are perfect examples of this. Freckles on a pale face, arched backs, unveiled intimacy… Christian Vogt’s photographs reveal a utopia of reality, which becomes almost illusory.
Christian Vogt is represented in France by Galerie Esther Woerdehoff.
Marine Mimouni