Beat Streuli | Bruxelles 05/06 2006 | Chromogenic colour print on paper with Diasec (acrylic sheet) ed. 1/3 | 200 x 800cm | Purchased 2008 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Image courtesy: Galerie Erna Hécey, Brussels
Beat Streuli engages with the longstanding tradition of works that reflect urban life, its energy, its speed and its crowds. He presents intimate portraits taken within a public context, offering open-ended narratives and a poignant examination of public identity and glimpsed inner life.
Employing a serial, almost documentary style in his work, Streuli plays on contradictions and polarities such as the natural and the stylised, documentary and fiction, public and private. Printed at a larger-than-life scale, his photographs refer to the format of public advertising but, rather than promoting consumer products, he memorialises the fleeting moments of everyday life. Working with a telephoto lens, Streuli captures his subjects without confronting them and, in doing so, the supposed privacy and anonymity of individuals in a crowd is shown to be violable. Superficial judgements and personal histories projected by viewers on the individuals depicted create an intimate space.
