Karlheinz Weinberger

Karlheinz Weinberger (10 June 1921 – 10 December 2006) was a Swiss photographer, known for his homoerotic portraits of rebellious young men.

Life Karlheinz Weinberger was born in 1921 in Zürich. He attended the literature high school there and began to teach himself photography. After the end of the Second World War, he temporarily worked as a furniture and carpet salesman, but was also unemployed for a long time. From 1955 until his retirement in 1986 he was a warehouse clerk at Siemens-Albis in Zürich. He lived all his life at the same address in Zürich urban district. Karlheinz Weinberger died in 2006.

Career Karlheinz Weinberger was a self-taught photographer spending over sixty years producing intimate, often homoerotic photographs of rebellious male youth, mostly working-class men. Weinberger worked in the warehouse at Zürich's Siemens factory during the day and his nights he spent shooting portraits of construction workers, bikers, and athletes for the underground gay journal Der Kreis. Weinberger published his works under the pseudonym Jim. In 1958 he began focusing his camera on the Halbstarken, an edgy, antiauthoritarian teen subculture whose members styled themselves as bad boys à la James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause or Elvis Presley.

Work As early as 1948, Weinberger made contact with the gay magazine Der Kreis, where he used the pseudonym “Jim”. At the parties of the district subscribers, he showed off his musical talent and was the “house photographer”. From September 1952 to 1965 his photographs were an integral part of the circle. With around 80 photos published, he had a significant impact on homosexual aesthetics until the end of the magazine in 1967 and its successor magazine Club68. The photographs, which Weinberger published under the pseudonym “Jim”, mainly show workers and evoke the homoeroticism of simple men.

From 1958 Weinberger began photographing the hooligan scene in Zürich. He was also interested in rockers and tattooed people. Weinberger was one of the first photographers to get permission to document the Hells Angels' local offshoot. Between 1964 and 1976 Weinberger also worked as a freelancer for various sports magazines and specialized in sports reports.

Weinberger took part in various group exhibitions in Zürich, Italy, Israel, Canada and the USA. The photo gallery of the Migros Club School in Zürich showed a first solo exhibition in 1980 under the title "The hooligans 1955-1960: 25 years ago, when Zürich became hooligans". His homoerotic photographs were presented to a wider audience for the first time in 2000 in the exhibition “Half-strong: Photographs by Karlheinz Weinberger” at the Zürich Museum of Design, and his pseudonym was dissolved.

Weinberger has taken part in various international photo competitions since 1963 and in 1968 won a prize in the "50 years of NIVON Holland" competition.

Weinberger's estate is kept in the Swiss Social Archives in Zürich.

Solo exhibitions 2019: Karlheinz Weinberger, Kornhausforum, Bern 2018: Karlheinz Weinberger or the Ballad by Jim, Photobastei, Zürich 2017: Karlheinz Weinberger, Photofestival Mérignac, France 2017: Karlheinz Weinberger, Photo Espagna, Madrid 2017: Swiss Rebels, Rencontres d'Arles, France 2014: Portraits 1962 - 1986, Maccarone, New York 2013: Karlheinz Weinberger, Solo project by Rod Bianco Gallery, Oslo at Untitled, Miami Beach 2012: Karlheinz Weinberger, Marc Oliver, Zürich 2012: Intimate Stranger, Kunstmuseum Basel / Museum of Contemporary Art, Basel 2011: Intimate Stranger, Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver 2011: Intimate Stranger, The Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York / Anna Kustera Gallery, New York 2011: Thugs to Bikers, in Color, Anna Kustera Gallery, New York 2011: Rebels, gallery cubus-m, Berlin 2011: Rebels, Musée Nicephore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône, France 2008: Karlheinz Weinberger: Vintage Prints: Belt, Jackets, Couples and More, Anna Kustera Gallery, New York 2004: Lehman, Leskiw and Schedler Gallery, Toronto 2003: Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, USA / Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles, US 2002: Karlheinz Weinberger, Lived life - a retrospective, Gallery Schedler, Zürich 2002: Karlheinz Weinberger, Photos 1954 - 1995, The Photographers' Gallery, London 2001: Attitude, Scalo, New York, USA 2000: Bully, Museum of Design, Zürich 1994: Tattoos by prominent Swiss tattoo artists, Egliswil 1993: Tattoos by prominent Swiss tattoo artists, Galerie Anita Dosch, Zürich 1980: The teenagers 1955 - 1960: 25 years ago when Zürich became teenagers, photo gallery Migros, Zürich