Tre oci / venice
From 22 September 2017 to 25 FEBRUARY 2018
Werner bischof
Photographs 1934 – 1954
250 images by the great Swiss photographer allow an overview of the stories and journeys of one of the reference points of the Magnum Agency, founded in 1947 by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa. Werner Bischof ventured into the most remote corners of the earth: from India to Japan, Korea, Indochina, and then on to Panama, Chile, and Peru. This show arrives in Italy on the occasion of the celebrations of the hundred years since the birth of the photographer, and consists of vintage prints, reminiscences, documents, letters, and publications.
For the first time there will be exhibited a selection of twenty previously unexhibited photos of Italy.
From 22 September 2017 to february 2018, Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice will host a large-scale anthological show devoted to Werner Bischof (1916-1954), one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, and one of the founders of the Magnum Agency.
The show, curated by his son Marco Bischof, is organised by the Fondazione di Venezia and Civita Tre Venezie with the collaboration of Magnum Photos and the Werner Bischof Estate, media partner Radio Monte Carlo. It will present 250 photos, mostly vintage, including Werner Bischof’s most important reportages, and will allow us an overview of the long journeys that led this Swiss artist to the most remote corners of the earth, from India to Japan, Korea, Indochina, and then on to Panama, Chile, and Peru.
For the first time there will be seen a selection of twenty previously unexhibited black and white photos that have Italy as their subject. In them we can discern the originality of the shots which reveal the “neorealist” eye of Werner Bischof.
The exhibition’s itinerary will lead the visitors back to the golden age of photojournalism by following the footsteps of Werner Bischof.
It will be an itinerary that, starting from a Europe that had was still devastated by the Second World War, will continue to India where you will be confronted by a country in the grip of poverty and misery, but where there can already be glimpsed the industrial developments that were to make it become one of the new millennium’s leading nations.
There follows a ruthless comparison of the elements of Japanese traditional culture. The drama of the Korean war then leads on to an analysis of the American continent.
In fact, Bischof’s journey continues to American cities, captures metropolitan developments, also with a series of colour photos, and it closes imaginatively with the villages of Peru and the peaks of the Andes where he was to die.
Bischof, considered to be one of the greatest photojournalists, did not restrict himself to recording reality with his lens, but stopped to reflect in front of his subjects in a search to express the dichotomies between industrial development and poverty, business and spirituality, modernity and tradition.
There will also be a section devoted to his landscape and still-life photos made in Switzerland between the mid-1930s and 1940s.
The show will have an English-language Aperture catalogue.
With the backing of the Tre Oci Club, a network of business friends that supports the Casa dei Tre Oci:
ATVO
Colorificio San Marco
Lozza originale dal 1878 by De Rigo Vision
Distilleria Nardini
Grafica Veneta
Magis Design
Manfrotto Imagine More
Marsilio Editori
BIOGRAPHY
Werner Bischof was born in Switzerland. He studied photography with Hans Finsler in his native Zurich at the School for Arts and Crafts, then opened a photography and advertising studio. In 1942 he became a freelancer for Du magazine, which published his first major photo essays in 1943. Bischof received international recognition after the publication of his 1945 reportage on the devastation caused by the Second World War.
In the years that followed, Bischof traveled in Italy and Greece for Swiss Relief, an organization dedicated to post-war reconstruction. In 1948 he photographed the Winter Olympics in St Moritz for Life magazine. After trips to Eastern Europe, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, he worked for Picture Post, The Observer, Illustrated and Epoca. He was the first photographer to join Magnum with the founding members in 1949.
Disliking the 'superficiality and sensationalism' of the magazine business, he devoted much of his working life to looking for order and tranquility in traditional culture, something that did not endear him to picture editors looking for hot topical material. Nonetheless, he found himself sent to report on famine in India by Life magazine (1951), and he went on to work in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Indochina. The images from these reportages were used in major picture magazines throughout the world.
In the autumn of 1953 Bischof created a series of expansively composed color photographs of the USA. The following year he traveled through Mexico and Panama, and then on to a remote part of Peru, where he was engaged in making a film. Tragically, Bischof died in a road accident in the Andes on 16 May 1954, only nine days before Magnum founder Robert Capa lost his life in Indochina.
FOR ALL PRESS, MATERIAL AND HD IMAGES
http://www.treoci.org/index.php/it/sala-stampa
Venice, July 2017
Title
WERNER BISCHOF. Fotografie 1934-1954
Venue
Casa dei Tre Oci
43 Fondamenta delle Zitelle, 30133 Giudecca – Venice
Steamboat
Zitelle stop
From Piazzale Roma and the railway station, line 4.1 – 2
Dates
22.09.2017>25.02.2018
Press preview
Thursday 21 September at 12 a.m.
Opening hours
10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; closed Tuesday
Info
tel. +39 041 24 12 332 ; ; www.treoci.org
#treoci ; #bischofvenezia; #bischoftreoci
Booking (obligatory for groups)
Ticket One
Call center: 199 757519
Tickets
€12: full price
€10: reduced price for students under 26; those over 65; special pass holders
€8: special reduced price for groups of more than 15 people
€24: reduced price for families (2 adults + 2 under 14)
€5: reduced price for schools
Free: children under 6; each escort for a group; the disabled and escort; two escorting teachers per class; card-holding journalists; tourist guides.
Guided tours
For groups of 15 to 25 people who have previously booked:
Italian €100; English €120
Dog free
Media Partner
Press office
CLP Relazioni Pubbliche
Anna Defrancesco
phone +39 02 36 755 700; mob. +39 349 6107625
; www.clponline.it
press release and images at www.clponline.it
Press office Civita Tre Venezie
Giovanna Ambrosano
phone +39 041 2725912; mob. +39 338 4546387
/ In collaborazione con