Bildaufbau Fotografie (Bern)

Christine Blaser completed the preliminary course at the School of Applied Arts in Bern and then did a one-year internship as a cascheur at the Stadttheater Bern. From 1973 to 1976 she attended the photography class at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich and graduated with a federal diploma. Since 1976 she has been working as a freelance photographer in Bern. From 1983 to 1990 she was a member of the studio group "Werkgruppe". In 1990 she co-founded the studio community in the Aareal and has been running her business there under the name "Bildaufbau" ever since. From the beginning Christine Blaser was also interested in painting. From 1982 to 1987 she studied drawing and painting with Toni Grieb at the Kunstgewerbeschule Bern. In 1987 she undertook a three-month trip to the South Seas "in the footsteps of Gauguin", which she documented with manually reworked Polaroids. She had her first exhibition of pure painting in 1991 at the Atelier Worb.

Creative description At the beginning of her professional career Christine Blaser worked mainly for the press. Among other things, she designed the front page of the magazine "UniIntern" (later "UniPress") over a period of almost 30 years, starting in 1977. Most of the time, she realized these with thematically staged black-and-white photographs, but often also with collages in which she incorporated graphic elements. In addition, she also photographed classic reportages. Through her membership in the studio community "Werkgruppe" she came into contact with architects, for whom she was able to carry out photographic assignments. In the course of time, she also received commissions from the Cantonal Building Authority of Bern, the Stadtbauten Bern and the Municipal Preservation of Historical Monuments. Today, her work focuses on architectural and industrial photography. In addition to commissioned work, Christine Blaser has also been involved from the beginning with artistic photography, where she seeks a connection with painting. She does not want to depict "objectively" and value-free, but to reproduce feelings and moods. Thus, she manually reworks Polaroid photographs by rubbing and scratching the not yet dry layers of paint with a pencil, and then enlarges them so that they look like impressionist paintings. Later, she reworks everyday photographs enlarged on canvas with acrylic paint and chalk. In her latest works, she uses paintings as backgrounds, on which she places parts of plants, for example, and then photographs them. The results are paintings in which the photographed objects merge with the painting and are no longer separable.