N.Y. Visions / Melancholia

When in 1978, René Groebli went to New York for two months, he did so with neither assignment nor clear intention. He knew the city well from his almost yearly visits for jobs – but this time, he exposed himself to the metropolis without the safety lines of appointments and acquaintances. For weeks, he roamed the streets, and when one looks at the pictures he took, one gets the impression he never talked to anyone during those days and nights, the camera his only companion. His New York is black, twilit, dimmed – street lights and lit windows fight against fog and rain. The debate is between the city itself – its houses, streets and cars – and the lonely wanderer with his camera. Back in the studio, he creates a series of black and white images that form the basis of his 1996/1997 portfolio N.Y. MELANCHOLIA as well as an image series he calls Babylon Babylon; in which he crossfades black and white with colour photographs, resulting in disconcerting, eerily dystopian images.