Beat Streuli: BXL

Swiss-born artist Beat Streuli's central motif is the urban environment and its inhabitants. But his quietly mesmerizing photographs are neither documentary nor conceptual: rather, they lead us to a form of aesthetics that could be described as the "glamor of the usual." In this beautifully produced volume, Streuli brings together a new series of images taken in his current home town of Brussels--primarily in his own neighborhood near the center of the city. It is an area populated largely by immigrants from diverse ethnic groups. As essayist Katerina Gregos points out, "While the business of representing the 'other' can be a tricky and sensitive issue, Streuli's approach is refreshingly non-judgmental, and unpretentious, despite being decidedly voyeuristic." Here, large-scale portraits of passersby and inhabitants of the city compel the viewer to look at the European capital as a melting pot metropolis that is forging a new cultural identity.