Werner Bischof

Werner Bischof (26 April 1916 – 16 May 1954) was a Swiss photographer and photojournalist. He became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1949, the first new photographer to join its original founders. Bischoff's book Japan (1954) was awarded the Prix Nadar in 1955.

Life and work

Bischof was born in Zürich, Switzerland. When he was six years old, the family moved to Waldshut, Germany, where he subsequently went to school. In 1932, having abandoned studies to become a teacher, he enrolled at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich, where he graduated cum laude in 1936.

From 1939 on, he worked as an independent photographer for various magazines, in particular, du, based in Zürich. He travelled extensively from 1945 to 1949 through nearly all European countries from France to Romania and from Norway to Greece. His works on the devastation in post-war Europe established him as one of the foremost photojournalists of his time.

He was associated into Magnum Photos in 1948 and became a full member in 1949. At that time Magnum was composed of just five other photographers, its founders Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, David Seymour, and Ernst Haas.

The focus of much of Bischof's post-war photography was showing the poverty and despair around him in Europe, tempered with his desire to travel the world, conveying the beauty of nature and humanity.

In 1951, he went to India, freelancing for Life, and then to Japan and Korea. For Paris Match he worked as a war reporter in Vietnam. In 1954, he travelled through Mexico and Panama, before flying to Peru, where he embarked on a trip through the Andes to the Amazonas on 14 May. On 16 May his car fell off a cliff on a mountain road in the Andes, and all three passengers were killed.

Publications

Publications by Bischof

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• Japan. Zurich: Manesse, 1954. (German)
  • Japan. London: Sylvan, 1954. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954.
  • Japon. Paris: Delpire, 1954. (French)

• Werner Bischof: Europa 1945 - 1950. Zürich: Tages-Anzeiger, 1990. OCLC 845274917

• After the War. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1997. ISBN 1-56098-721-9. Foreword by Miriam Mafai.

• Werner Bischof. Phaidon 55's. London: Phaidon, 2001. ISBN 0-7148-4041-6. Text by Claude Cookman.

• Questions to My Father: A Tribute to Werner Bischof. London: Trolley, 2004. ISBN 1-904563-25-2. Edited by Marco Bischof.

Publications about Bischof

• Werner Bischof, 1916-1954 His Life and Work. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990. ISBN 9780500092156. By Marco Bischof and Rene Burri. With an introduction by Hugo Loetscher and text by Marco Bishof and Guido Magnaguagno.

Awards

• 1955: Japon (1954; Japan) won the Prix Nadar.

External links

• Werner Bischof Estate