"What Time is It?"

The exhibition

What time is it? Over the past ten years, these few words are likely those that Swiss photographer Karine Bauzin has most often uttered. To the point of having invented her own word: “whatimifying”!

Enquiring about the time is one of the most banal questions one can ask, regardless of social, economic, or religious background, political inclinations, language or nationality. Yet, Karine Bauzin has asked it hundreds of times to strangers encountered during her many trips around the world. She returned with hundreds of photographs, which put together, form a reflection about time.

Karine Bauzin has worked for the press for over 25 years. Her approach is humanistic and never intrusive. Her exploration of time began during a trip to South Africa, where a friend's father had taken them to visit a natural reserve. There, she suddenly asked him what time it was and intuitively decided to capture the moment. The resulting first image is foundational, the moment her study on temporality truly began.

What is interesting in Karine Bauzin's approach is the common answer she received from her subjects, in the form of a gesture: before being able to answer the question "what time is it?", the interviewee would raise their wrist and look at their watch. This gesture became commonplace when watchmakers invented the wristwatch, and it is this movement’s universal nature that the photographer wanted to express through her images that tell of the conquest of the wrist by the culture of time. Produced without resorting to any staging, her art recounts both the cultural specificities of the people she meets and our own contemporaneity.

Indeed, for one week, the who’s who of the watchmaking world will be gathered in the same place during this cornerstone event in the watchmaking calendar. The main exhibition will later be held on the Pont de la Machine, in Geneva, from June 1 to September 10, 2023.

At the weekend, industry professionals and members of the public alike can discover Karine Bauzin’s images for the first time. A hostess will greet visitors at the fair entrance, and lead them to a 360° video installation where they will promptly be asked the time. Within this video booth, they too will have the opportunity to be "whatimified” thanks to a rotating post that will capture every angle. They can then pick up their video at the entrance to the “What Time Is It?” exhibition in hall 2 of Palexpo.

The exhibition space where Karine Bauzin's work is displayed was designed to reference timepieces, inviting visitors to walk through a circular configuration clockwise. The nearly 80 exposed images among the hundreds taken by the photographer over a decade are revealed on its walls. This refined scenography leaves plenty of room for the work, while the photographer’s words contextualise certain images.

During the preview period, the exhibition book will be available for sale in Switzerland only, at the main institutional and independent booksellers in French-speaking Switzerland as well as on the publisher's website (What time is it? – Good Heidi Production) from March 20, 2023. Visitors to Watches and Wonders will also be able to find their copy near the exhibition on the Watch Print stand.