Werner Bischof

Portrait of a woman carrying a basket on her head. Photograph by Werner Bischof, 1950

Werner Bischof was born in April 1916 in Zurich. Following his aptitude for painting, he attended a drawing course in Schiers for one year. Dissatisfied, in 1934 he attended the photography course taught by Hans Finsler at the Zurich School of Applied Arts. After specializing in still life and receiving his diploma in 1936, he opened a photography and graphic design studio for posters and magazines; two years later he was hired by the publishers Amstutz & Herdeg. For the Swiss National Exhibition of 1939, he designed the layout of the graphic arts pavilion and collaborated on the fashion pavilion. At the outbreak of the Second World War, after a short stay in Paris, he enlisted in the Swiss army, also working as a war reporter. This experience allowed him to assess the gap between studio photography, based on careful planning, and photojournalism, rapid in execution and unpredictable in its dynamics. He would choose the latter, for its human contact and the possibility of continuous engagement with the present, without abandoning the technical perfection developed during his training. In the meantime, he met Arnold Kübler, writer, man of the theatre and editor-in-chief of the art and culture magazine Du, and between 1941 and 1942 established a lasting collaboration with him. At the same time, he frequented Zurich’s artistic avant-garde circles, joining the surrealist movement Allianz.
From 1945 onward, he worked with the leading international magazines, producing important reportages in war-torn Europe, including one devoted to Italians interned in Switzerland. In 1946 he crossed Italy, recording on film the devastation and hardship generated by years of hostilities: in particular, the protest of the Milanese against the separation of Trieste from Italy, the survivors of Nazi extermination camps in Trentino-Alto Adige, orphanages for children in Emilia-Romagna, and the ruins of the abbey of Montecassino. In Rimini he met his future wife, Rossellina Mandel. In 1948 he photographed the St. Moritz Olympics for Life, and the following year he became a member of Magnum Photos. He continued to travel through Northern and Eastern Europe and returned to Italy in 1950, where he published several features in Epoca. On this occasion he also took about fifteen photographs in Sardinia, documenting the harshness and backwardness of working conditions in the Campidano of Cagliari and in the Iglesiente.
In 1954 he travelled to Panama, Chile and Peru on assignment for Magnum, where, at the age of thirty-eight, he lost his life in a car accident in the Andes mountain range.

Bibliography
Sguardi forestieri. I grandi fotografi in Sardegna: Henry Cartier-Bresson, Bruno Barbey, Werner Bischof. Nuoro, Imago, 2008.
Werner Bischof in Sardegna, 1950. Nuoro, Imago-MAN, 2012.

Update

8/9/2026 - 15:05