Jules Spinatsch, SEMIAUTOMATIC PHOTOGRAPHY, 2019

Jules Spinatsch began working with automatic cameras fifteen years ago, making use of the equipment employed in the surveillance of public spaces. At the time he created a 180° panorama of the World Economic Forum in Davos consisting of 2,176 individual images. He continued the group of works entitled Semiautomatic Photography with, among other things, shots of a football stadium, the Vienna Opera Ball, a prison, and the SAP headquarters. The book Semiautomatic Photography now shows the complete cycle for the first time. In it, Spinatsch foregrounds a selection of individual pictures that otherwise form a tiny element in his panoramas. Rather like in William S. Boroughs’s cut-ups, this process of “cutting out” single photos gives rise to a subversive image strategy, reflecting on the function of the visual in a society of control. The book appears in conjunction with the exhibition “Jules Spinatsch, Semiautomatic Photography 2003 – 2020” at the Centre de la Photographie Genève, from 12 December 2018 to 2 February 2019.