BILDHALLE will highlight the photo basel booth with three artists who are newly representing: Renato D'Agostin (*1983, Italy), Flor Garduño (*1957, Mexico) and Carolle Bénitah (*1965, Morocco). A special focus on works by the Spanish artist duo Albarrán Cabrera and a selection of photographs by legendary Swiss photographers René Burri, Werner Bischof and René Groebli will complete the presentation.

Renato D'Agostin: «For a moment, your breathing halts and the shutter is released. You see how everything is merging in front of the camera, how every line is starting to make sense, every movement is becoming an actor on the stage, from the most simple gesture to the most complex dynamic. This is how I envision a great shot.»
Dislocating subjects from their realities, D'Agostin captures his perception of the space that surrounds him, showing the relationship between architecture and people, and thus opening a new portal into the imagination of the viewer. He photographs visual elements that most of us won't even notice and leaves his personal mark on every picture he takes. Mastering every aspect of black and white photography, D'Agostin knows better than anyone how to imbue a classic gelatin silver print with a very contemporary sensibility.

Flor Garduño: «I would argue that the ordinary and the historic, or perhaps the symbolic - since these two realms intersect in my photographs - are a celebration of fertility. I want go express our dignity, beauty, suffering, and resistance. This is the force of the female gender.»
Flor Garduño is the most important female contemporary photographer from Mexico. She represents an unique style of descriptive photography infused with mystical archetypes that are characteristic of Mexican Surrealism. Her images create a bridge between worlds - the sacred and the quotidian, the body and the spirit - allowing us glimpses that are, expressed in the words of Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, «a moving portrait of eternity.»

Carolle Bénitah: «I reconstruct the mixed memory of my family by inventing and tailoring from found images all of what has disappeared, people as well as places. I choose positive and idealized aspects of an identity in order to illustrate all these fables that tend to be told about ancestors.»
In her artistic work, Carolle Bénitah investigates her own biography. Applying gold onto old family photos that she collects at flea markets, she obscures the particular the identity of the depicted person, opening them up for one's own recollections and projections. Her photographs wake the viewer's biographical memory while simultaneously attesting to her own family history.