stop. think. feel. act. - Open Your Eyes Photo Festival Zurich presents photography and science in the public space - powered by EDITION LAMMERHUBER
From 8 September to 15 October, 2023, OPEN YOUR EYES is presenting a festival of creative photography for the people of Zurich – as a plea for understanding of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Themed upon ‘stop. think. feel. act.’, the festival invites guests to pause for a moment, reflect and feel the magic.
This is where world-class photography meets world-class science – to create an entirely new communication format. To this end, Open Your Eyes, ETH Zurich and The Photo Society (TPS), an association of more than 200 National Geographic photographers, have created large-scale open-air installations in the parks, streets and squares of Zurich.
The aesthetic magic of the pictorial narrative transforms Zurich into a city of photographs and the public space into a stage set for a synthesis of the arts, the significance of which is tied to the results of scientific research and innovation. In seventeen exhibition islands, the photo festival combines documentary photography and scientific findings in a plea for peace, tolerance and community fueled by the humanist spirit.
The photographic works are not to be understood as illustrations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but as comments and remarks in the sense of Cornell Capa’s ‘Concerned Photographers.’ Capa chose this term to describe works that go beyond describing events and show them with a humanitarian impulse. This school of thought is also a familiar concept that is related to science: The term ‘Concerned Scientists’ is used to describe the use of independent science to solve our planet’s most pressing problems.
The line-up of photographers at the Open Your Eyes festival is unique: Esther Haase, Chris de Bode, Maryam Firuzi, George Steinmetz, Ciril Jazbec, Ana María Arévalo Gosen, Jodi Cobb, Vera Mercer, Dominic Nahr, David Doubilet & Jennifer Hayes, Rina Castelnuovo & Jim Hollander with Tsafir Abayov, Eli Reed, Steve McCurry, Bea Bar Kallos, Roger Ballen, Ziv Koren, Stuart Franklin, Lois Lammerhuber, Brent Stirton, Peter DeJong, Patrick Zachmann, Gilles Peress, Alfred Yaghobzadeh, Alec Soth, Peter Turnley, Peter Menzel with Alexandra Boulat, Miguel Luis Fairbanks, Peter Ginter, Leong Ka Tai and Louis Psihoyos; Renée C. Byer, Cássio Vasconcellos, Jerome Gence, Gerd Ludwig, Randy Olson, James Balog, Shana & Robert Parke Harrison, Cooper&Gorfer, Anna Boyiazis, Michael Nichols, Goran Tomašević, Markus Eisl and Gerald Mansberger from eoVision and the special exhibition ‘Code of the Universe’ from CERN.
The festival divides the exhibitions into a city route – Polyterrasse, Lindenhof, St. Peter, Münsterhof, Frauenmünster, Limmat, Grossmünster – and a lake route, leading from the General Guisan Quai through the Arboretum to the Enge harbor lake beach. A distance of nearly four kilometers – and admission is free of charge.
“We have come together to celebrate life,” Lois Lammerhuber, Artistic Director and mastermind of the photo festival, said in a nutshell during his opening speech on 8 September, 2023, when describing the essence of this new festival format.
The following media day brought together the exhibiting photographers and scientists for a tour of all exhibitions to discuss their work and its significance in a dialogue in front of the more than interested journalists from Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.
The festival catalogue is available directly in the visitor center at the General Guisan Quai, Zurich, and online at Edition Lammerhuber. It not only shows the quintessence of the exhibitions, it also enchants readers with its typical scent of hay. A carbon-neutral print on grass paper, it thus underscores the topic of the festival: the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
Publication : OPEN YOUR EYES . Photo Festival Zurich . 14.8 × 21 cm, 272 pages, 84 photos . German, English . Softcover, open thread-stitching . ISBN 978-3-903462-04-5 . edition.lammerhuber.at//open-your-eyes
GoSee : openyoureyesfestival.photo
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Combines gather for the last week of the soybean harvest on Fazenda Piratini, a 25 thousend hectare farm on fertilized, non-irrigated land. It’s owned by SLC Agricola. They are the largest soybean grower in Brazil, with over 600k hectares of mega-farms planted in soybeans, corn, and cotton. They have weather stations in the fields to correlate that with yield per sq/m and compare with fertilizer, seed timing, planting method, etc. to measure and improve productivity. They practice no-till farming, and every 3-4 years they plant a cover crop “capim brachiaria” to help the soil recover.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Ilopango, San Salvador – 8 March, 2021. This group of women is imprisoned for crimes related to the 18th Street gang. The prison has decided to segregate women based on their gang affiliation to prevent conflicts and fights. Patricia, the woman in the centre, is serving a sentence of over a hundred years. She is allowed out of her cell for only one hour a day, has no contact with her family or lawyer, and is not permitted to engage in activities.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
3°48.6’ N / 42°32.9’ E Luuq, Somalia. The Somali city of Luuq is located in a loop of the Juba River, which flows almost completely around the city. Fertile orchards extend along the river, while at greater distances from the river the dry climate results in a much more sparse vegetation cover. One of the oldest existing settlements in Somalia, Luuq was part of the colony of Italian Somaliland during the first half of the 20th century and later also the hometown of Somali President Siad Barre.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Organic farmer Alex examines his cow Olivia on the alp in Stoos. Every day he inspects all his cows in the pasture, even though they roam free on a large area. His dog, Bari, always accompanies him on his rounds and makes sure that the cows are “in the right places”. After checking on the cows, he makes sure that the fence is intact.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Wilberforce dreams of the biggest trophies. He is eleven years old and lives with his parents and six siblings in the north of Uganda. Wilberforce says, “I want to become the fastest runner in the world. I want my parents, my school and my country to be proud of me one day. This is why I run long distances every day. Only by training like that can I reach my goal.”
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Solar Powered Shower. At the Charan slum settlement, children enjoy a morning shower, something never afforded to them before, which gives them a clean start to the day and some relief from India’s often debilitating heat. The solar powered shower facility was a gift from the Tong-Len Charitable Trust in Dharamsala, India. The shower facility offers them a new world of wonderment, since before most of these children could only bath in a local stream and only when their other duties allowed them to.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective from Madrid, creates installations all over the world using plastic waste. Their recent display in Madrid’s famous fountains showcased a day’s worth of the city’s plastic trash, emphasising its impact to the public.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
ICELAND. The Thoroddsen family of Hafnarfjörður, photographed with all their possessions outside of their suburban home at 4 pm, December 15, 1993. The family lives in a wood-framed house overlooking the nearby harbor, 10 km from Reykjavik. Björn (Bennie) is a pilot for Iceland Air and Margret (Linda) Gunnlaugsdöttir, a former flight attendant, is now a milliner. Most valued possessions: Hand-built airplane (father); cello (mother); horse (elder daughter); knife (elder son); and antique pistol (younger son).
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
The current Large Hadron Collider tunnel, 27 kilometres in circumference (solid line), and the proposed new tunnel, which could accommodate the larger research infrastructure envisioned by the FCC collaboration (dotted line).
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Conical ice stupas serve as water towers, storing winter meltwater for spring planting. The youth group that built this one in the northern indian village of Gya also installed a café in its base. They used the proceeds to take village elders on a pilgrimage.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine, 2005. Workers enter the so-called diarator stack, where they drill holes in the concrete to install support beams that are supposed to stabilise the outward leaning Western wall, which is in danger of collapsing. Their dark workspace is located close to the center of the explosion and is so highly contaminated, that they can only work in 15-minute shifts despite wearing highly protective gear and respirators.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Virtual singers are not just a voice that we listen to. They are the voice which guide us. It’s a myth to believe that digital natives possess inferior social skills or are more likely to avoid personal interaction in favour of digital interaction. According to Nielsen’s studies, person-to-person contact is still a reliable and effective solution to the digital natives’ worries. The problem: for those digital natives, their parents, relatives or religion don’t have the answers to their questions in a world full of uncertainty.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
BRICK WORKERS, INDIA. Debt bondage can trap entire families for generations. Brick kiln owners lend workers a small sum of money for an emergency like a funeral or medical problem, charging exorbitant interest rates, and when the workers cannot pay it back, they are forced to work off their debt as slaves — and the debt can be passed on to their children.
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents OPEN YOUR EYES Fotofestival Zürich 2023
Vanessa and Trey. USA, 2016. Average sea levels are rising around the world at annual rate of 3 mm per year – but at twice that rate in certain hotspots, like this one by Virginia Beach, Virginia. The increase comes from the melting of ice on land, heating and expansion of sea water, and, in some cases, the subsidence, or sinking, of coastal land masses. The children of today call out to us: in the future, sea levels will be much higher than they are now. Even a tiny bit of vertical rise means that coastal storms will drive much more water across the broad expanses of flat-lying coastal terrain – particularly in major river deltas.
