From 22 September 2017 to 25 February 2018, Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice hosts a major anthology dedicated to Werner Bischof (1916-1954), one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, one of the founders of the Magnum agency.
The exhibition, curated by his son Marco Bischof, organized by the Fondazione di Venezia and Civita Tre Venezie, in collaboration with Magnum Photos and the Werner Bischof Estate, will present 250 photographs, mostly vintage, taken from the most important reportages by Werner Bischof, which will allow you to retrace the long journeys that took the Swiss artist to the most remote corners of the world, from India to Japan, from Korea to Indochina up to Panama, Chile and Peru.
For the first time, a selection of 20 unpublished black and white photographs will be exhibited, which have Italy as their privileged subject. It captures the originality of the shot that reveals Werner Bischof's 'neo-realist' eye.
The exhibition itinerary will transport the visitor to the golden age of photojournalism, leading them in the footsteps of Werner Bischof.
It will be an itinerary which, starting from Europe, which has just emerged devastated by the Second World War, will arrive in India where we will find ourselves faced with a country gripped by poverty and misery, but where we are beginning to glimpse the industrial developments that will to be one of the leading nations of the new millennium.
Thus, the ruthless confrontation between the elements of traditional Japanese culture and the drama of the Korean War will introduce the analysis of the American continent.
In fact, Bischof's journey will continue in US cities, of which he will capture the metropolitan development, also with a series of color photographs, and will ideally close between the villages of Peru and the Andean peaks where he died.
Bischof, considered one of the best photojournalists, didn't just document reality with his lens, he stopped to reflect in front of his subjects, trying to tell the dichotomies between industrial development and poverty, between business and spirituality, between modernity and tradition .
There will also be a section dedicated to landscape and still life photographs, taken in Switzerland between the mid-thirties and forties of the twentieth century.
Ph: Werner Bischof, Southern part of the USA, 1954 © Werner Bischof / Magnum Photos
