Paare / Couples

Collected photographs of pairs of people oblivious to the camera, from unknown strangers to Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller

In 2015, Swiss filmmaker Iwan Schumacher (born 1947) began collecting candid photographs of pairs of people who appear oblivious to the camera, either because they’re on familiar terms with the photographer or because they don’t realize they’re being observed. Together with Peter Pfrunder, director of the Swiss Foundation for Photography, Schumacher synthesized his collection into book form. Whether friends, lovers, partners, family members or complete strangers, the duos portrayed in Couples fall across a range of ages, power dynamics and gender combinations. Although it displays a wide spectrum of human emotions, the book does not claim to show a photo-historically representative selection of people from all walks of life. It is, instead, an eclectic assortment of analog and digital stills spliced together to form a new multithreaded mosaic film.

Back in 2013, Swiss filmmaker Iwan Schumacher began collecting photographs of couples who seem oblivious to the camera, either because they’re on familiar terms with the photographer or don’t even realize they’re being observed. Coincidentally, Peter Pfrunder, director of the Swiss Foundation for Photography, had long envisioned putting together an exhibition of photographs of couples. So it was only natural for the two of them to team up to produce a book.

The couples portrayed in Paare / Couples are of various types, durations and gender combinations. Each picture is complete unto itself and shows something happening between the two subjects; each sets a different film in motion in the viewer’s imagination, a before and after, which nevertheless remain a matter of delightful speculation – the mystery of the image remains forever veiled. Although Paare / Couples gives visible, almost palpable expression to a wide range of human emotions, the book doesn’t claim to show a photo-historically representative selection of people from all walks of life. It is, instead, a score gleefully and liberally composed by two photophiles, an eclectic assortment of stills that seem to be drawn from as many different motion pictures, but can be spliced together to form a new multi-threaded mosaic film.