NINETIES is a contemporary documentary, social and personal journey through the last decade before the turn of the millennium. One was faced with a terrible lack of clarity in 1990. The new decade promised nothing at all and threatened to become an incomprehensible, unwieldy and poorly remembered decade. But little by little it became visible how and to what end these years defoliated, multiplied and fragmented. Namely in such a way that nothing fitted together any more.
The Nineties began to explode twice: The unwieldy EDP machines mutated into portable home computers, people got wired up - and a second world emerged via the Internet. In 1990, only electronic freaks sat in front of the screen; since 1996, there has been the Internet column in the TA magazine and, at the millennium, the Internet for everyone. The chat lines made it possible to get to know each other globally, share hobbies, secret longings, mini-conspiracies - everything worldwide. Suddenly one was faced with the super-euphoric possibility of exchanging information with the whole world twice over: In real life and via computer. Was the second half of the nineties perhaps the most euphoric time in history? And at its end lurked the greatest disillusionment of all time? The answer is yes: Street Parade and Internet equal globalisation.
On 5 September 1992, it was time to get out of the cellars and onto the streets. It was the starting signal for the dancing disinhibition of Europe. The first Street Parade in Zurich was audibly and visibly invented, and parties were also improvised in Basel under various Rhine bridges, at the harbour or at motorway construction sites. In Berlin the Love Parade rolled on and in London the cellars were reconquered. Underground like in the early Beatles times. At the same time, unemployment rolled in like a steamroller. And at the same time, the time of the classic family model ticked away.
This decade also saw a radical change in photographic creativity. Digital techniques changed the aesthetics, handling and implementation, expanded them and made them much faster and more colourful. People are producing what they can.
During this decade, Nicole Zachmann lived in Basel and London, and continued to document the life of the art and music world. Countless colour and b/w photographs in analogue and digital techniques are produced.
Text: Albert Kuhn (CH)
