Willy Spiller

The author Paul Nizon about Willy Spiller

I have often asked myself what makes Willy Spiller’s photography so outspoken and freshly alive, so captivating, for it to leave such a lasting impression, even after years. I believe it is because of its blend of brazen curiosity and roguish complicity, but also of brotherly compassion.

Spiller is the embodiment of the headhunter. What I mean to say is that he is always hot on the trail of human comedy, or rather tragic comedy. Always led by the question, how do they manage to cheat and fight their way through the carnival of life (the valley of tears): the small, the big, the mountebanks and silent sufferers, the victims, the stars with false teeth, the PEOPLE. Yes, how do they do it and how does he elicit a smile from them, a sparkle of courage and mischief, of beauty, even radiance? You need to have this inside yourself. You must learn from your own experience in addition to what literature and art have taught you.

One cannot learn this in school; it is a matter of personal calibre, of disposition, in the end, it is all about character.

Behind his mask of hipster and hoodlum, Willy Spiller is a daydreamer, hungry for beauty. It is from here that his compassion for everything human originates, which, after all, is only a bashful disguise for his love of humankind. This is his vision, fuelled by his sophisticated artistic energy.

Regarded as a prodigy and at a young age Willy entered Zurich’s art scene with the necessary amount of juvenile cheek to rapidly establish a name for himself as a photographer. He has travelled extensively and has accumulated an impressive body of work in which – next to the “street”, or should we say: “city” – his encounters with artists and writers occupy central stage.