Obituary of a pioneer – He was a guardian and promoter

Obituary of a pioneer – Walter Binder is gestorb of Zurich founded the Swiss Foundation for photography, the countless discounts of photographers houses and for the recognition of photography as an art form begins.Christoph Heim0 comment Walter Binder, right, in January 1992 in Zurich. Next to him, the art historian David Streiff.Photo: Keystone

The Zurich-based photographer Walter Binder, who founded, together with Rosellina Burri-Bischof 1971, the Swiss Foundation for Photography (today the Swiss Foundation for photography), died on Sunday at the age of 89 years. In the case of the Swiss Foundation for photography, located since 2007 in Winterthur, Switzerland, is the – also by the Federal government recognised and subsidised reference centre for photography. Here be carried out not only exhibitions, but also over 80 estates of photographers and more than 100’000 original prints stored, digitized, and the General Public and made accessible to research.

thanks to the photo Foundation, which had in the first decades after 1971 in the Kunsthaus Zurich guest right, have been torn from countless Swiss photographers the Forget. The former curator of the Kunsthaus Zürich, Guido Magnaguagno, has worked in the eighties with a Binder and numerous photo exhibitions. He remembered well how, at the time, Jakob Tuggener, Paul Senn, Hans Staub, Gotthard Schuh, Herbert Matter, or Walther Bosshard, just to name a few, have been discovered thanks to the commitment of the Foundation for photography.

Franks conveyor

Peter Pfrunder, Director of the Foundation for photography, pays tribute to tie a pioneer in photography. He had purchased it with Rosellina Burri-Bischof together invaluable contributions to the photography in Switzerland. Thanks to him, countless archives are received from photographers and have been opened up, he also got engaged and passionate with exhibitions and books for the public recognition of photography as a cultural performance in a fight.

the enormous appreciation of Robert Franks in this country, has kept with his book “The Americans” in 1962, the United States, a relentless mirror, owes a good part of Walter Binder, the time of life for the recognition of photography as a contemporary art has engaged the form. The first exhibition of the Foundation for photography at the Kunsthaus in Zurich took place in 1974 and was called “Photography in Switzerland 1840 to today.” Thereafter, the Kunsthaus Zurich has a photo gallery that was operated by the Foundation, and in 1976, was inaugurated with an exhibition of Robert Frank.

photo Studio

Of particular importance in the construction of the Foundation for photography also the contacts from Zurich in the Romandie and in Ticino were. Almost simultaneously with the Foundation for photography, the founding of the Musée de l’elysée in Lausanne by Charles-Henri Favrod, worked closely with Binder was carried out in October 1971.

Binder, who had directed from 1971 to 1998, Foundation for photography, made his education from 1949 to 1952 with Hans Finsler at the school for photography at the kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich, he stood from 1957 to 1976, itself. In 1954, he opened in Zurich in a private photo Studio for property and architecture photography. So, for example, binder architecture photos are kept in the Institute for the history and theory at the ETH Zurich.

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