Bilder von Zana Briski im Bernerhof

Es ist für uns eine Ehre, Bilder der international renommierte Künstlerin Zana Briski in unserem Haus ausstellen zu dürfen.

Die Oscar-prämierte Filmemacherin und Fotokünstlerin wurde 2005 für ihren Dokumentarfilm "Born into Brothels“ mit dem Academy Award ausgezeichnet. Seit vielen Jahren bereist sie die Welt und widmet sich der künstlerischen Auseinandersetzung mit Tieren in ihrem natürlichen Lebensraum.

Ihre Arbeiten werden international gezeigt und stehen für eine eigenständige, konsequente künstlerische Handschrift – geprägt von Geduld, Präzision und grossem Respekt gegenüber ihren Motiven.

Die Werke bleiben als Dauerausstellung im Hotel Bernerhof und sind dauerhaft zugänglich – für unsere Gäste ebenso wie für externe Besucherinnen und Besucher.

About the artist 

Zana Briski (born 1966) is an Academy award filmmaker and photographic artist with a passion for wildlife and its preservation. She has traveled to 80 countries and explored remote territories on every continent, most often alone, capturing living creatures of all sizes shapes and forms, from insects to whales. Zana’s artistic career started in Calcutta where she spent 10 years working and filming children of prostitutes. The resulting feature « Born into Brothels » won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, an Emmy and 33 other awards. Zana then travelled to Africa and started photographing animals with an unusual panoramic camera which required her to be very close to her subjects; this intimacy is a strong feature of her work, allowing viewers to develop an immediate connection with each creature she portrays. Fascinated with insects she pursued her travels to Borneo, where, alone in the middle of the primary forest, she started making her first photograms of praying mantas. Photogram imaging is the oldest photographic technique. It allows an image to be created without a camera by placing subjects directly in front of photo sensitive paper and exposing it to light, resulting in a negative shadow silhouette. Travelling between Asia, Africa and the USA, experimenting with delicate papers, challenging surroundings and extreme climatic conditions, Zana became a master of this technique and created her unique images of nightly animals.

Bearograms 

Upon her return to the USA in 2019 Zana settled upstate New York where she started working with bears. Over the years Zana worked with more than twenty bears. She named and got to know every single one of them with their different personalities. To work with them she would set up the « stage » in the forest, and sit out, night after night, for over two years, waiting for a bear to show up, go about its business, and then capture a moment of its life. Each of the resulting photograms is unique and represents a singular experience with a wild animal in its habitat. Through her work Zana shares an intimate moment spent with her beloved animals after long periods of searching, finding and being accepted by them. Each life-size print reflects her profound understanding and respect for her subjects in their natural environment as well as her concern and desire for their protection.

Zana Briski at the « Bearnerhof » 

Hotel Bernerhof could not have hoped for a better and more representative opportunity to show its deep connection to the historical and cultural life of Gstaad and its region than by a show focused on bears, the heraldic symbol of the Canton of Bern as well as our own hospitable and culinarian ambassador. We are immensely proud to host a selection of Zana Briski’s rare and wonderful bearograms on our walls, and are looking forward to sharing them with fellow local and foreign art, nature and animal lovers.