Brigitte Lustenberger

Are you here or just a memory – Brigitte Lustenberger, Flower

2023

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Brigitte Lustenberger studied at Zurich University and received her MA in Social and Photo History in 1996. In the following years, she established herself as a fine art photographer. She moved to New York and received her MFA in Fine Art Photography and Related Media at Parsons School of Design in 2007. The main issues in her works lie in her interest in the study of the gaze, the interplay between absence and presence in a photographic image and the fact that the reading of a photograph is most often triggered by a collective memory. She explores the media itself and its close connection to themes like decay, memory, death and transitoriness. Brigitte Lustenberger has shown nationally and internationally in both solo and group shows. She had solo shows at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. Switzerland, at Walter Keller’s Scalo Gallery in Zurich and New York, etc. Her works have been part of group shows in the Kunsthalle Bern, Kunsthalle Luzern, etc. She was awarded the Grand Prize at PDNedu, the Golden Light Award, Shots/Corbis Student Photographer of the Year, and others. She received fellowships for Cairo and Maloja and was awarded the prestigious swiss Landis & Gyr Residency in 2013. In the same year, she was awarded for the second time (after 2002) the Photo Award of the Canton Bern. Brigitte Lustenberger creates a modern and yet baroque universe by following a baroque still-life tradition to evoke meaning by showing and choosing certain objects, facial expressions and gestures. The images are very much about the transitoriness of being and the constant human involvement in it - and its resulting changes of fates. The artist goes back literally to the meaning of the word portrait, which descends from the Latin word - protahere - which can be translated as - to pull out something, to bring something forward, to bring something to light. The black spaces from where the faces or the still-lifes appear, leave room for the viewer’s interpretation. Most of the lighting in the photographs is natural daylight coming in through a window.