Werner Jeker's 'Photo Typo' Explores the Act of Looking

Werner Jeker's exhibition 'Photo Typo' in Switzerland examines the act of looking before the image. The show opens with a work depicting Jean-Luc Godard wearing glasses and Le Corbusier lifting them to their foreheads, suggesting they are not observing but interrogating. Jeker, a Swiss graphic designer, places photography at the center of his practice. In one piece, a swastika is superimposed over the feet of a line of men, while the iconic image of a child in the Warsaw Ghetto is inscribed within a slightly disjointed cross, next to an animal carcass and corpses. The photographs retain their documentary status, while graphic intervention acts on signs of power, defusing their iconic function. The montage approaches what Georges Didi-Huberman calls 'taking a position'.