The photo archive of the Swiss Society for Folklore archives more than 105,000 photographs from 20 collections. We have set ourselves the task of digitising the material, putting it into book form and reproducing it.

Coincidence in Order

We were interested in randomness within a considered and numerical ordering system. We determined the contents systematically – and therefore randomly – on the basis of the existing lettering system. The order in the book corresponded to that of the archive system, thus allowing a neutral view of the images and texts of the archive.

Structured Randomness

The cover of this book presents an excerpt of our lettering system that was used to determine the content. The new combinations of images in random sequence create new worlds. These new combinations of images also create new worlds, new pictorial statements that offer the viewer a different perspective.