The Great Wall of China

The photographs cover the entire spectrum of the frontier walls built from 300 AD to 1644. The 1987–1988 survey was enlarged and supplemented with additional photographs in 1990, 1993, and 2000, as access to newly discovered sections of the Walls was granted.

The complete series of photographs stands as an unromantic, sometimes brutal confrontation with a system of defense and questions the enduring mythical and symbolic stature which it gained. China’s most famous landmark is depicted as a manifestation in stone, brick, and rammed earth of the imperial will to draw a line between things within and things beyond, of centralist control, and hence of the history of a frontier policy without which the notions and machinations propelling modern China cannot be understood.

The Great Wall of China – From the Making-of

The Great Wall of China – Solo exhibitions

Selected views, followed by dates of all venues

Imperial Palace Museum (Forbidden City), Beijing (10.12.–20.12.1993)

Château de Cadillac, Arret sur l’Image, Bordeaux ’92 (01.–30.04.1992)

Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund (12.08.–11.11.1990)

Solo exhibition The Great Wall of China (Organized by the Musée d’Elysée; Lausanne, now Photo Elysée).

Palais Beit ed-Dine, Chouf (Lebanon) (1994)
Imperial Palace Museum, Beijing (10.12.–20.12.1993)
Kunstmuseum Zug, Zug (19.09.–14.11.1993)
Musée d’art et d’histoire, Neuchâtel (26.06.–05.09.1993)
Arret sur l’Image, Bordeaux ’92 (01.–30.04.1992)
Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (08.02.–14.04.1991)
Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund (12.08.–11.11.1990)

Excerpts from the The Great Wall of China in solo exhibitions

Selected views, followed by dates of all venues

Tracings
Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern (30.09.2023–04.02.2024)

At Eastern Gates
Schloss Wolfsberg, Ermatingen, Switzerland (04.09.–07.12.2012)

Wieviel Erde—Ce qu’il faut de terre—How Much Land—Quanta Terra
Galleria Il Diaframma, Milano (08.01.–02.02.1991)
Photoforum Pasquart, Biel-Bienne (02.06.–01.07.1990)
Photographers Gallery, London (12.04.–19.05.1990)
Nikon Galerie, Zürich (02.12.1989–16.01.1990)

Excerpts from the The Great Wall of China in collective exhibitions

Metamorph. Trajectories (The Great Wall of China)
9^th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Arsenale (12.09.–07.11.2004)

The spirituality of void. Khmer sculptures and modern Western art (Gran Muralla China)
Centre Cultural Bancaixa, València (02.10.2001–06.01.2002)

Muri di carta. Fotografia e paesaggio dopo le avanguardie (Viaggio alla muraglia cinese)
Pavillion of Italy, 45th Venice Art Biennale (13.06.–10.10.1993)

La Chine
Commanderie de Saint-Luce, Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles (July/August 1988)

Monograph

The Great Wall of China
Thames & Hudson, London and Paris 2001 (Revised edition)
Preface by the author
Including The Wall and the Books by Jorge Luis Borges,
The Great Wall of China by Franz Kafka
and The Great Wall in History by Luo Zhewen
149 photographs
216pp
Thames & Hudson, London 1990
Introduction by the author
Including The Wall and the Books by Jorge Luis Borges
and The Great Wall in History by Luo Zhewen
159 photographs
224pp (with 1 gatefold)

Selected anthologies, catalogues, and print media publications

The Great Wall of China, LIFE Magazine, 96 Shanghai, November 2013
Über das Fotografieren des sogenannten Anderen – gerade in China, in:
At Eastern Gates, Script 5, Wolfsberg, Ermatingen 2012
Schweizer Fotobücher-Swiss Photobooks / Livres de Photographie Suisse, Baden 2011
Long and winding Road. The Great Wall of China,
The Sunday Review/The Independent on Sunday, London, 16 September 2001
La Espiritualidad del vacio, Valencia 2001
Made in Switzerland. Les Collections de photographies de la Conféderation, Zürich 1997
Homage to DU, Photographers International, 15, Taipei 1994
Muri di carta. Fotografia e paesaggio dopo le avanguardie, Milano 1993
Il Tempo e la Muraglia, Area, 6, Milano 1991
Die Grossen Mauern Chinas. Eine Idee, DU, 580, Zürich, 1989
Der Puls der Erde, Das Magazin, 40, Zürich, 7.-8. Oktober 1988

Reviews

»This adventure was to have a decisive impact on his career and would help feed future projects in other Asian countries […]. Thirteen years after his initial trip, the photographer was invited by the Chinese government to visit certain sections of the Great Wall that had been closed or simply unknown at the tome, especially in Inner Mongolia. That visit gave rise to a new edition of the book in 2001. The photographer slightly reworked the book’s layout for the occasion. In addition to the format, which the photographer reduced in size, the images featuring local inhabitants have all but disappeared. Schwartz adopted a more radical approach, concentrating on the landscape and the notion of traces. This desire reflects the goal he had originally set himself when he left to explore the wall so many years earlier, that is to say, not to let himself be sidetracked by other photographic subjects. Like Richard Long, whose work greatly moved him, Schwartz has made landscape the main focus of his photography.«

Nathalie Herschdorfer in: Swiss Photobooks from 1927 to the Present, Lars Müller Publishers & Fotostiftung Schweiz, 2012

»To walk the Wall’s length (or rather, follow its diverse fragments) was almost fool-hardy: for one thing, his research had thought [Schwartz] that the Great wall didn’t exist. It is a Western notion, summing up all too neatly what is in fact a messy network of all kinds of ancient structures thrown up across China.«

Parkett, 89, Zürich 2011

»One can, at least, confidently predict that Kafka would have been wholly seduced by Daniel Schwartz’s book about this epic structure.«

Jewish Chronicle, London, 25 January 2002

»The only sitter in Schwartz’s portraits is the wall.«

The Independent on Sunday, London, 16 September 2001

»Daniel Schwartz hat [die Mauer] als Grenze der Welt und der Vorstellung gelesen.«

Kunstforum, 137, Köln, Juni-August 1997

»… photographs on themes of global reappropriation and post-industrial waste. Schwartz’s photographs of the Great Wall of China petering out in the desert have major implications here.«

The Observer, London, 20 June 1993

»Eine Arbeit, die Mass genommen hat an ihrem Gegenstand.«

Tages-Anzeiger, Zürich, 28. Februar 1991

»La réussite artistique se double d’un exploit humain.«

La Tribune de Genève, Genève, 9 Février 1991

»A deeply personal adventure.«

The Peak Magazine, Hongkong, October 1990

»An image wavering between two forms, one suspended, the other a profile so improbable as to suggest a masquerade, with two barely discernible silhouettes in the coal-dark background. This finely composed picture was snapped just the right moment by Daniel Schwartz, a photographer recently returned from an exploration of China – a China we have not seen before.«

Camera International, 16, Paris, 1988