Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy website Werner Bischof 'Photographs 1934 – 1954' at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice
september 28, 2017 - Casa dei Tre Oci

Werner Bischof 'Photographs 1934 – 1954' at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice

250 images by the great Swiss photographer allow an overview of the stories and journeys of one of the reference points of the Magnum Agency, founded in 1947 by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. #wernerbischof ventured into the most remote corners of the earth: from India to Japan, Korea, Indochina, and then on to Panama, Chile, and Peru. This show arrives in Italy on the occasion of the celebrations of the hundred years since the birth of the photographer, and consists of vintage prints, reminiscences, documents, letters, and publications.



For the first time there will be exhibited a selection of twenty previously unexhibited photos of Italy.


From 22 September 2017 to february 2018, #casadeitreoci in Venice will host a large-scale anthological show devoted to #wernerbischof (1916-1954), one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, and one of the founders of the Magnum Agency.


The show, curated by his son Marco Bischof, is organised by the Fondazione di #venezia and Civita Tre Venezie with the collaboration of Magnum Photos and the #wernerbischof Estate, media partner Radio Monte Carlo. It will present 250 photos, mostly vintage, including Werner Bischof’s most important reportages, and will allow us an overview of the long journeys that led this Swiss artist to the most remote corners of the earth, from India to Japan, Korea, Indochina, and then on to Panama, Chile, and Peru.


For the first time there will be seen a selectionof twenty previously unexhibited black and white photos that have Italy as their subject. In them we can discern the originality of the shots which reveal the “neorealist” eye of #wernerbischof.


The exhibition’s itinerary will lead the visitors back to the golden age of photojournalism by following the footsteps of #wernerbischof.
It will be an itinerary that, starting from a Europe that had was still devastated by the Second World War, will continue to India where you will be confronted by a country in the grip of poverty and misery, but where there can already be glimpsed the industrial developments that were to make it become one of the new millennium’s leading nations.
There follows a ruthless comparison of the elements of Japanese traditional culture. The drama of the Korean war then leads on to an analysis of the American continent.
In fact, Bischof’s journey continues to American cities, captures metropolitan developments, also with a series of colour photos, and it closes imaginatively with the villages of Peru and the peaks of the Andes where he was to die.


Bischof, considered to be one of the greatest photojournalists, did not restrict himself to recording reality with his lens, but stopped to reflect in front of his subjects in a search to express the dichotomies between industrial development and poverty, business and spirituality, modernity and tradition.


There will also be a section devoted to his landscape and still-life photos made in Switzerland between the mid-1930s and 1940s.


The show will have an English-language Aperture catalogue.


With the backing of the Tre Oci Club, a network of business friends that supports the #casadeitreoci:
ATVO 
Colorificio San Marco
Lozza originale dal 1878 by De Rigo Vision
Distilleria Nardini 
Grafica Veneta
Magis Design 
Manfrotto Imagine More
Marsilio Editori




BIOGRAPHY
#wernerbischof was born in Switzerland. 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 with 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 (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 16 May 1954, only nine days before Magnum founder Robert Capa lost his life in Indochina.
Tre oci / venice
From 22 September 2017 to 25 FEBRUARY 2018
Werner bischof
Photographs 1934 – 1954