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12 December 2021

Artistic visual works used for the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 (4 - 20 Feb) and sports images by Austrian press photographer Lothar Rübelt on view at the show 'Rêver en blanc' (dream in white) at TOM - The Olympic Museum in Lausanne (9 December 2021 - 27 February 2022)

The Olympic Winter Games Beijing happen next year from 4 until 20 February. In the history of the Olympic Games, the city is the first one where both Summer (2008) and Winter Games (2022) are held. History and future of the games is also the theme of the currently running exhibition 'Rêver en blanc' (translated 'dream in white') at TOM - The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Artworks like posters, athlete's sports gear and clothing or pictures by press and sports photographers document the developments of new technologies, sports and the growing gender equality beginning with the first Olympic Winter Games in 1924 in Chamonix, France, where 258 athletes competed at 16 events in 9 disciplines of 5 sports like skiing or skating, until nowadays with outlooks on strategies for making the games more responsible, climate friendly and inclusive. In 1924, 5% of the athletes were women; in 2022, more than 45% of the athletes will be female.

Images from right: Chamonix Mont-Blanc tourism advertisement, circa 1900. Left: Sujet of the temporary exhibition 'Rêver en blanc: The Epic Story of the Olympic Winter Games' on view from 9 December 2021 until 27 February 2022 at TOM - The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Images: © IOC.

In Beijing, more than 2,800 athletes will compete at 109 events, in 15 disciplines of 7 sports. Several of the upcoming events are absolutely new such as women's and men's Freestyle Skiing Big Air events of the sports category 'Skiing', discipline 'Freestyle Skiing'.

The Olympics have tradition in being accompanied by artistically created visuals like posters and emblems reflecting the zeitgeist of the respective time. The exhibition presents a retrospective of all the official posters of the Olympic Winter Games. Today, the mediation of the games is extended by digital media. The mascot and emblem of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 were created from Chinese culture and language with reference to the spirit of the Winter Games. The mascot 'Bing Dwen Dwen' is a panda dressed in a futuristic space suit and appears for example in an animated sci-fi space video. The mascot's costume is made of ice ('Bing' in Mandarin means translated to English 'ice' ) and pays tribute to new technologies and the infinite possibilities in future. Bing Dwen Dwen was designed by Cao Xue and his team at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA). The Beijing 2022 emblem visualizes the two traditional Olympic sports skiing and skating and was developed from the Chinese character for 'winter'.

Media is thematized through photography at the exhibition. The Olympics 1924 were attended by less than 90 journalists. The official numbers of 2018 show 15.000 journalists. In our days, the news from the games are additionally spread by users via their social media accounts. The 'Nostalgia' section (1924 - 1968) of the exhibition 'Rêver en blanc' is dedicated to press & sports photography for classical media. Around 80 rare archival photographs from the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage (OFCH) collections will be on show; some of them are publicly exhibited for the first time. Among the presented photographers is the Austrian Lothar Rübelt (1901-1990) who innovated sports photography with a special camera lens technology developed by Leica especially for him. The Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage has one of the largest and most complete collections of Rübelt's Olympic photographs.


Editorial book tip concerning the work of Lothar Rübelt: The book 'Wiener Bilder. Fotografien von Lothar Rübelt' with photographs of Vienna by Lothar Rübelt written by scientifically working authors, culture and sport historian Matthias Marschik and historian and deputy director of the picture and graphic collection of the Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) Michaela Pfundner, was released by the Austrian publisher Edition Winkler-Hermaden in October 2020.



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