Werner Bischof: Questions To My Father
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Product details
- ISBN 9781904563259
- Weight: 1040g
- Dimensions: 210 x 290mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jan 2004
- Publisher: Trolley Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Werner Bischof was a singular post-war photographer. His focus on showing the poverty and despair around him in Europe was tempered with a desire to travel the world, and convey the beauty and humanity waiting to be discovered through his lens. Tragically his inspirational life was cut short by a car accident in Peru, but his legacy lives on, and here his son Marco presents 70 of his father's photographs, never before published.
In 1916, with the Great War reducing northern Europe to a treeless, shattered void, a boy was born to the prosperous director of a pharmaceutical firm in Zurich. He was named Werner. It was not an auspicious time to be born and, indeed, his mother died soon after. As a child, young Werner sought order in his life by dissecting snails and photographing, in the limpid light of his creation, the elegant whorls revealed. He did not become the physical training instructor (a compromise) his father wanted him to be. He did not become the painter he had once wanted to be in Paris in 1939, on the brink of another devastating conflict. He became Werner Bischof, the man, and a photographer of incalculable artistry who found in both order and the chaos he confronted and experienced a sublime beauty, a humanity that was singularly his own.
His photographs of the post-war Europe in poverty and despair expressed infinite hope for the human condition; yet he was only 29. Less than 10 years later he was dead, leaving behind among his last photographs that of a Peruvian child playing his flute on the edge of a ravine. It is now an iconic photograph, and has a fatal allure.
Bischof died when his jeep plunged over a ravine in the Andes on a quest for the faces, the lives, of harmony there. Fifty years later his son Marco has gathered together 70 previously unpublished photographs by Werner Bischof. They powerfully reiterate the man his father was, the nature of his humanity and his search for a benign and beautiful cognisance of the brief and terrifying world he lived in.
In 1916, with the Great War reducing northern Europe to a treeless, shattered void, a boy was born to the prosperous director of a pharmaceutical firm in Zurich. He was named Werner. It was not an auspicious time to be born and, indeed, his mother died soon after. As a child, young Werner sought order in his life by dissecting snails and photographing, in the limpid light of his creation, the elegant whorls revealed. He did not become the physical training instructor (a compromise) his father wanted him to be. He did not become the painter he had once wanted to be in Paris in 1939, on the brink of another devastating conflict. He became Werner Bischof, the man, and a photographer of incalculable artistry who found in both order and the chaos he confronted and experienced a sublime beauty, a humanity that was singularly his own.
His photographs of the post-war Europe in poverty and despair expressed infinite hope for the human condition; yet he was only 29. Less than 10 years later he was dead, leaving behind among his last photographs that of a Peruvian child playing his flute on the edge of a ravine. It is now an iconic photograph, and has a fatal allure.
Bischof died when his jeep plunged over a ravine in the Andes on a quest for the faces, the lives, of harmony there. Fifty years later his son Marco has gathered together 70 previously unpublished photographs by Werner Bischof. They powerfully reiterate the man his father was, the nature of his humanity and his search for a benign and beautiful cognisance of the brief and terrifying world he lived in.
Werner Bischof was born in Switzerland in 1916. He studied photography with Hans Finsler in his native Zurich at the School for Arts and Crafts, then opened a photography and advertising studio. In 1942, he became a freelancer for Du magazine, which published his first major photo essays in 1943. Bischof received international recognition after the publication of his 1945 reportage on the devastation caused by the Second World War.
In the years that followed, Bischof traveled in Italy and Greece for Swiss Relief, an organization dedicated to post-war reconstruction. In 1948, he photographed the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz for Life magazine. After trips to Eastern Europe, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, he worked for Picture Post, The Observer, Illustrated, and Epoca. He was the first photographer to join Magnum as one of the founding members in 1949.
Disliking the “superficiality and sensationalism” of the magazine business, he devoted much of his working life to looking for order and tranquility in traditional culture, something that did not endear him to picture editors looking for hot topical material. Nonetheless, he found himself sent to report on famine in India by Life magazine in 1951, and he went on to work in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Indochina. The images from these reportages were used in major picture magazines throughout the world.
In the autumn of 1953, Bischof created a series of expansively composed color photographs of the USA. The following year, he traveled through Mexico and Panama, and then on to a remote part of Peru, where he was engaged in making a film. Tragically, Bischof died in a road accident in the Andes on May 16, 1954, only nine days before Magnum founder Robert Capa lost his life in Indochina.
In the years that followed, Bischof traveled in Italy and Greece for Swiss Relief, an organization dedicated to post-war reconstruction. In 1948, he photographed the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz for Life magazine. After trips to Eastern Europe, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, he worked for Picture Post, The Observer, Illustrated, and Epoca. He was the first photographer to join Magnum as one of the founding members in 1949.
Disliking the “superficiality and sensationalism” of the magazine business, he devoted much of his working life to looking for order and tranquility in traditional culture, something that did not endear him to picture editors looking for hot topical material. Nonetheless, he found himself sent to report on famine in India by Life magazine in 1951, and he went on to work in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Indochina. The images from these reportages were used in major picture magazines throughout the world.
In the autumn of 1953, Bischof created a series of expansively composed color photographs of the USA. The following year, he traveled through Mexico and Panama, and then on to a remote part of Peru, where he was engaged in making a film. Tragically, Bischof died in a road accident in the Andes on May 16, 1954, only nine days before Magnum founder Robert Capa lost his life in Indochina.
