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Revisiting Zurich’s 90s techno scene – in pictures

Images from Jules Spinatsch’s Protest Party Portraits, snapped at Street Parade events in the mid-90s, are on display as part of a wider series of exhibitions celebrating Zurich’s techno culture, which is listed by the Swiss culture ministry as one of the country’s living traditions

Zurich was quick to embrace techno and, by the time the music reached its zenith in the 1990s, the city had become a prime destination for the genre in Europe. Kicking off with fewer than 1,000 participants, they have grown steadily to attract 1 million visitors each year – three times the number of the city’s inhabitants. Almost 30 years later, it seems as if the people are looking questioningly from the pictures of the past into the future Individual portraits at Zurich’s street parades in the mid-90s “Often I would shoot at the exact moment the person saw the camera, but their facial expression was not yet reacting to me, to capture an unexpected, unsuspecting look, a look that would surprise me and those I was photographing.

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