IT

Through 13 September 2026, the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin is hosting “Walter Pfeiffer. In Good Company,” the first major Italian institutional exhibition dedicated to Swiss photographer Walter Pfeiffer, curated by Nicola Trezzi and Simon Castets. Over one hundred works span fifty years of his career, offering a reflection on the relationship between glamour, desire, and everyday life, as well as on the anti-hierarchical role of photography as a medium.

Walter Pfeiffer. In Good Company is the title of the first major Italian exhibition dedicated to Walter Pfeiffer (Beggingen, 1946), a Swiss photographer whose body of work spans fifty years of images created on the fringes of diverse fields such as fashion, art, queer culture, and middle-class daily life. His practice moves between portraiture, the nude, still life, and landscape while maintaining a personal vision: bodies captured in their vulnerability, domestic surfaces, and an aesthetic of the ordinary transformed into glamour. Pfeiffer is often compared to Nan Goldin for his diary-like approach and is considered the father of an unfiltered vision that has influenced subsequent generations of photographers. He began taking photographs without any career ambitions, simply for himself and his friends, printing his work at the cheapest department stores. Over one hundred works, spanning from the 1970s to the present, make up a retrospective that the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin has chosen to host as a belated yet necessary act of recognition.

THE WALTER PFEIFFER EXHIBITION IN TURIN

The exhibition, curated by Nicola Trezzi and Simon Castets, evokes Pfeiffer’s practice right from the title. In Good Company alludes to the collaborative process that characterizes his work: the casting of subjects, their participation in the shot, and the relationship as a constitutive element of the image. This same logic structures the exhibition layout, where the juxtaposition of the works takes precedence over the individual image.
The space hosting the exhibition is the third floor of the Pinacoteca, a white cube physically integrated into the structure of the Lingotto, a former industrial site. Pfeiffer’s professional biography intertwines with current use of the Lingotto, which houses not only the Pinacoteca but also a shopping center. Trained as a window dresser at a department store in Zurich and then as a graphic designer at Globus, the city’s shopping hub, the photographer has built his practice within the realms of consumer culture and commercial display. The contrast between the neutrality of the white cube and the exhibited works thus echoes the artist’s own journey.

PFEIFFER’S PHOTOGRAPHS AT THE PINACOTECA AGNELLI

The exhibition itinerary eschews chronological order in favor of aesthetic and visual juxtaposition, and each room is rooted in a conceptual core linked to Pfeiffer’s practice. The dominant principle is that of pattern: the repetition of the same subject to the point of abstraction, accumulation as a method, and seriality as a form of thought. In Glamour Elvetico and Tra le righe, this manifests in the play of light on the male body and in the still lifes of the 1970s, where error is already a conscious tool. In El Dorado, seriality becomes a conceptual structure: the diptychs of young people photographed on the streets of Zurich and Paris ‒ same subject, same distance, black and white ‒ retain the logic of the double-page spread from the book Das Auge, die Gedanken, unentwegt wandernd, for which they were originally conceived. In Centro di Ispirazione, Pfeiffer manifests accumulation: the pattern is at once a visual form and a repeated gesture, the point where the structure of the image and emotion coincide. Atlante del desiderio and Anti Eroe Super Model conclude the exhibition by juxtaposing landscapes, fashion photographs, and self-portraits without distinction, reminding us that for Pfeiffer there is no hierarchy among subjects, nor among genres.

HOW THE EXHIBITION HAS BEEN CURATED

Walter Pfeiffer. In Good Company is an exhibition that creates an open narrative, reflecting the artist’s creative logic without, however, being anchored to a defined theme. Trezzi and Castets have chosen not to construct a celebratory retrospective: they present both independent and commissioned photographs together, thereby conveying the unity of Pfeiffer’s artistic language. The exhibition layout resembles a scrapbook assembled room by room, like the ones Pfeiffer has kept throughout his life. Visitors are thus guided through the works without an imposed hierarchy, fostering a direct encounter between the viewer and the viewed. The title also captures this: good company, without further explanation.

Sara Collivasone

30 April – 13 September 2026
Walter Pfeiffer. In Good Company
curated by Nicola Trezzi and Simon Castets
Pinacoteca Agnelli
Lingotto – Via Nizza 262/103, Turin
Walter Pfeiffer. In good company

The text has been translated in English using AI