Pioneering Swiss photographer Jules Decrauzat was fascinated by the new world of motor sport, amazed by the cars’ speed and power. The Swiss Photography Foundation is now showing a selection of his work that was developed over 100 years ago and has recently been rediscovered.
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Gaby Ochsenbein worked at Swiss Radio International and later at SWI swissinfo.ch from 1986 to 2018. She lives in Bern.
Decrauzat (1879-1960) had originally studied as a sculptor but as a young man working in Paris, he began to turn from photography to the new medium of photo journalism. Static, posed shots were not his thing – he wanted to capture scenes full of action and dynamic energy.
Motor sports and flying were particularly fascinating to him – they embodied an ambitious, exciting future world, a whole new time.
Decrauzat worked for the Geneva-based sports magazine, La Suisse Sportive, but he didn’t just take photos of pilots and race-car drivers. He also snapped cyclists, tennis players and boxers. The general public also made their way into his pictures, whether on dusty roadsides or set against a backdrop of snow-covered mountains.
The exhibitionExternal link includes photographs that were developed between 1910 and 1925. They belong to a collection of 1,250 glass negatives which were unearthed at Swiss photo agency Keystone last year.
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