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GOTTHARD SCHUH

 

Gotthard Schuh

Gotthard Schuh

«Vor dem Chinesenhotel, Singapour», 1938

Gotthard Schuh

Gotthard Schuh

"Tanzende Mädchen", Bali 1938

Gotthard Schuh

Blick vom Borobudur auf den Vulkan Merapia, 1938



Gotthard Schuh

Ins Wasser springende Knaben, 1940s


Gotthard Schuh

Fischer an der Südküste von Java, 1938



Gotthard Schuh

«Parlez-moi d'amour», 1932



 

Gotthard Schuh

Strasse im Kohlegebiet von Charleroi,
Belgien, 1937



 

 

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Gotthard Schuh

Gotthard Schuh was one of the most important Swiss photographers of the 20th century. In 1930 he interrupted a promising career as a painter to devote himself fully to photography.

Schuh enthusiastically participated in the aesthetic revolution that took place in the world of photography in the late 1920s and which championed a “new vision”. The flourishing field of photojournalism offered him an opportunity to express his visual ideas, with the magazine Zürcher Illustrierte setting the standards within Switzerland.

Alongside his activities as a reporter, Schuh always aimed to escape from everyday reality. In the early 1930s he spent various periods in Paris where the ideas of the “new vision” prevailed and where he developed a style that could be described as “poetic realism” focusing on people as a subject. The atmosphere of particular places and lyrical expressivity became the motor of his work. He also explored Zurich at this period where he lived and worked for most of his life. In 1935 the city became the subject of his first book of photographs, a work that goes far beyond a merely touristic or documentary record.

In March 1938 Schuh left for Singapore, Java, Sumatra and Bali on a trip that lasted eleven months. On his return he published the book Inseln der Götter [Islands of the Gods] in 1941 revealing itself on closer examination to be a subjective travel account. Inseln der Götter is one of the best-known and most successful books of Swiss photography, which was published during World War II. Schuh’s most important publication of the 50s was Begegnungen [Encounters] in which he combined old and recent photographs in a work of free association that is both innovative and self-contained. Its images focus on the theme of the encounter: between a man and a woman looking for each other (or separating), or between the photographer and people, landscapes and things. Through his overtly subjective gaze on these encounters, Schuh became an important influence for young Swiss photographers. In 1950 Schuh co-founded the Kollegium Schweizerischer Photographen association together with the photographers Werner Bischof, Paul Senn, Jakob Tuggener and Walter Läubli. It brought together eminent photographers and promoted original photography with artistic aspirations. They attributed great importance to individual and subjective expression and to photographs that achieved a powerful effect but were devoid of a particular purpose. (Fondacion Mapfre)