Fischli/Weiss

The Swiss artist duo Fischli/Weiss worked on the photographic series Airports from 1987 to 2012. It can be seen as a subset of their broader and equally brilliant project Visible World.

Over the course of more than two decades, Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946–2012) photographed tarmac scenes, parked airplanes, runways, terminals, and jet bridges in airports around the world. My producer’s mind wants to know whether they stole the shots or went through the motions to obtain permission, but that’s for another day!

While airports are typically experienced as emotionally charged zones—marked by tension, excitement, boredom or disorientation — Fischli/Weiss turn their attention to the banal and overlooked. The result is a body of work that captures airports with striking neutrality, asking us to rethink the privilege of air travel.