Campaign: ‘Frozen Kisses’ reveal the hidden in colour 

12 June – 11 October 2026

You might think that the kiss has long since been told. From Ovid to Netflix, from the first teenage party to the last goodbye on the train platform – kissing happens everywhere. But what remains of this moment when the lips part again? What if we could suddenly make this wordless language visible? Not as a cheesy selfie, but as a colourful portrait of the chemical truth that every kiss leaves behind.

Austrian scientist and photographer Norbert Span, internationally renowned for his photographs of snow crystals, has developed a method exclusively for the festival that takes kissing into a new dimension. A drop of kiss is flash-frozen on a microscope slide, artfully illuminated, and photographs are taken that transform what would otherwise remain hidden – water, proteins, salts, enzymes and a touch of the inexplicable – into abstract worlds of colour. The technique requires precision and speed, because biological samples change in seconds. The result: fine art prints that make the invisible visible and stage the kiss as an interface between biochemistry and emotion. Thus, the kiss becomes a visible trace of an invisible connection, rather than a wordless confession.

With ‘Frozen Kisses’, Span succeeds in making the interface between art and science tangible for the public in this event, which will take place near the tourist information centre from 12 June to 11 October 2026. The event invites visitors to question their own kisses – not as a banal gesture, but as a complex ritual that combines closeness, identity and transience in a single drop. Those who take part will not only receive a picture, but also a new perspective on what photography can achieve: staging the invisible and shifting the boundaries between body, emotion and visual art. 

Thus, the fleeting kiss becomes a frozen moment that remains. An image that not only shows, but also makes visible what connects us.