The Albertina Museum is devoting a retrospective presentation to photographer Alfred Seiland (*1952), who is probably the best-known Austrian photographer internationally. Seiland was Austria’s first artistic photographer to work in color and deliberately follow in the footsteps of the founders of New Color Photography—William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, and Stephen Shore.

In his work as a documentary photographer, Seiland consistently spends long periods of time dealing with various cultural landscapes. His earliest series, created in the USA and entitled East Coast – West Coast (1979–1986), consists of exactingly composed, atmospherically dense shots that reproduce specific lighting and spatial situations.

The works from the group Österreich (1981–1995), on the other hand, are characterized by a humorous perspective. The territory of ancient Rome is at issue in the series Imperium Romanum (since 2006), which shows historical sites in contemporary contexts and illuminates the charged relationship between antiquity and the modern era. And finally, a campaign for the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (1995–2001) features Seiland’s staged photographs of well-known personalities.