Richard Kalvar (1944-)
World Economic Forum Davos, 2017
Richard Kalvar / Magnum Photos
Carl de Keyzer (1958-)
World Economic Forum Davos, 1997
CARL DE KEYZER /MAGNUM PHOTOS
Guy Le Querrec (1941-)
Horse market in Saignelégier, canton Jura, 1980
Guy Le Querrec / Magnum Photos
Ferdinando Scianna (1943-)
Geneva, 2008
Ferdinando Scianna / Magnum Photos
Alex Webb (1952-)
Lindt chocolate factory, Zürich, 2002
Magnum Photos
Jean Gaumy (1948-)
Followers of Archbishop Lefèbvre in Ecône, canton Valais, 1977
Jean Gaumy / Magnum Photos
Erich Lessing (1923-)
Summit in Geneva, July 1955: Swiss diplomats await the "Big Four"- President Dwight D. Eisenhower from the USA, Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin from the Soviet Union, Anthony Eden from Great Britain, and Edgar Faure from France.
ERICH LESSING/MAGNUM PHOTOS
Peter Marlow (1952-)
Summit in Geneva, 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan give a press conference.
(c)Peter Marlow-Magnum Photos
Werner Bischof (1916-1954)
The town of St. Margrethen at the Swiss-German border on May 3, 1945: prisoners of war and forced labourers wait to cross into Switzerland.
WERNER BISCHOF/MAGNUM PHOTOS
René Burri (1933-2014)
Hungarian refugees in a detention centre in Trogen, Appenzell Outer Rhodes, 1956.
REN BURRI/MAGNUM PHOTOS
Josef Koudelka (1938-)
Fasnacht, or carnival, celebration in Zürich, 1976
JOSEF KOUDELKA / MAGNUM PHOTOS
Erich Hartmann (1922-1999)
A vault in Swiss bank SBG in Zürich, 1985
Erich Hartmann / Magnum Photos
Chien-Chi Chang (1961-)
Basel, 2011
Chien-Chi Chang / Magnum Photos
Martin Parr (1952-)
Switzerland, 1990
Martin Parr / Magnum Photos
John Vink (1948-)
Hoch-Ybrig, canton Schwyz, 1997
JOHN VINK/MAGNUM PHOTOS
In 1947, as Europe lay in ruins, like-minded humanist photographers founded the agency “Magnum Photos” in Paris. It remains the oldest and most renowned photo agency in the world. Many of its images are iconic. To what extent was – or is – Switzerland a theme for the agency’s photographers?
If you enter “Switzerland” into the Magnum archivesExternal link, you’ll get around 9,000 results. Photographer Martin Parr focused extensively on Swiss cultural peculiarities, the World Economic Forum in Davos is always a topic, Henri Cartier-Bresson traversed the country, and the post-war images of legendary photographers René Burri and Erwin Bischof heavily influenced how the world saw Switzerland.
In 1947, during the heyday of photo journalism, Robert Capa, George Rodger, David “Chim” Seymour and Henri Cartier-Bresson founded the Magnum Photo agency as a cooperative. Images could not be cropped, a credit was obligatory, and the negatives and rights belonged to the author.
Originally the photographers would travel the world, from crisis to crisis, capturing life for magazines such as “Look”, “Life” or “Vu”. In the meantime, the choice of subjects expanded. Whoever wanted to join – and there were hundreds of applications a year – had to be voted in through a long process.
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
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Photographer René Burri has died at 81
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Burri, who was born in Zurich in 1933 and later moved to Paris, was hired by the prestigious Magnum agency in 1955, and travelled around the world documenting the major political events of the 20th Century. Burri was only 13 years old when he photographed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill standing in an open-top car…
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These are just a small selection of the brutally honest, but deeply touching, poetic works of Magnum photographer Leonard Freed currently on display at Lausanne’s Musée de l’Elysée in his first major retrospective – “Worldview”. Leonard Freed, who died last year aged 77, was a quiet, introspective man who preferred the language of black-and-white photography…
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As a friend, Cartier-Bresson was granted rare access into the sculptor’s intimate world. He captured Giacometti’s portraits at his Paris studio on the rue Hippolyte-Maindron. But more personal shots were gleaned on a holiday with the sculptor and his mother at their family home in Stampa, a mountain village in southeastern Switzerland. However, this intimacy did not…
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Unlike many of the photographers of his time, Halsman (1906-1979) did not use photography as a means to seize a fleeting moment –discovering the thrill of being in the right place at the right time. Instead, he carefully crafted each one of his images, seeking however to retain an element of spontaneity. It was this…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.