Werner Bischof (1916–1954) The Young Magnum Promise We Shouldn’t Forget

After photography was born in the 19th century, image production capabilities slowly became more and more available for the people. These slow but promising steps eventually ended up in a visual juggernaut we can’t escape nowadays. For some people this is bad, for some others this is good. No matter your side on this, one thing is certain, we are now able to see the world via countless ways, making it somewhat hard for people to get impressed with photos any longer. That is why we truly believe that it is important to slow down our pace, and dedicate a contemplative and conscientious reading to some photographers’ work. Today we want to talk about the things we consider to be important to always remember from the Swiss photographer Werner Bischof, the young promise from Magnum that died too soon. He was the very first new photographer to join the original Magnum crew, and died at the age of 38 in Peru after a car accident.

Art Plays an Important Role

At the age of fifteen, he wanted to study painting, but his father wasn’t on board with that and “convinced” him to form to become a gymnastics professor. After a while he stood up and managed to enter at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich. There he learned all he could from natural drawing from Alfred Willimann, and all he could absorb about photography from Hans Finsler. Four years later, he graduated cum laude at the age of 20. Those four years definitely had an impact in his way of blending light with his vision of…