In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Zurich's youth was rebellious. An entire generation of students was in search for the 'new'. In 1981, photographic artist Simone Kappeler left her native Switzerland, setting off on a road trip across America. She took with her a Hasselblad, a 35 mm camera, as well as a Polaroid. Over the course of the journey, she would add a multitude of cheap cameras to this collection that enabled snapshot-like images - taken unselfconsciously whenever a motif sprang at her. The images reflect a direct and unrestrained manner, they tell of immediate sensual experience and the longing for freedom and independence.

Thirty-five years later, Kappeler has revisited the vast collection that resulted from her undertaking. The selection of some 230 images and their composition reveal a consistent artistic perspective and a signature style. And even today, her 1981 view of America has lost none of its magic.

Text in English and German.

"[A] captivating album of horizons glimpsed and encounters chanced across a vast, open, easygoing country that you might have some trouble recognizing right now." * Smithsonian Magazine *
"Nearly a quarter-century after that other Swiss photographer, Robert Frank, made his road trip, Kappeler’s lens found different Americans. It’s not so much that this was a different America; it wasn’t. The Cold War was raging, Ronald Reagan had just taken office, and a new conservatism was spreading across the country. The blind politics and social divisions that Frank highlighted in the 1950s were returning after two decades of cultural radicalism. But Kappeler’s book seems to ask: What if Frank’s 767 rolls of film were edited with an eye for joy, instead of strife, separation, and hardship?" * Photo-Eye blog *

Simone Kappeler, born 1952, read German and French literature and art history at University of Zurich before studying photography at Zurich's School of Design (now Zurich University of the Arts), from where she graduated in 1979. She lives and works as a freelance photographic artist in Zurich.

Peter Pfrunder is director of Swiss Foundation for Photography in Winterthur, Switzerland.