Gotthard Schuh - Begegnungen ("Meetings") - 1956

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EXCELLENT, WIDELY UNDERRATED BOOK by well-known Swiss photographer, painter and graphic artist Gotthard Schuh (1897-1969).

"Schuh is considered a representative of a new photographic style. He was interested in everyday life and social reality, which he documented in a sober, objective visual language. His photographs corresponded to the modern photojournalism that became established in the major European illustrated magazines in 1930. Schuh was also active internationally. In 1941, after a trip to Indonesia, his much-acclaimed book Islands of the Gods was published."
(Wikipedia)

IN BREATH-TAKING PHOTOGRAVURE PRINTING.

TRUE FIRST ORIGINAL PRINTING (published same time also by Büchergilde Gutenberg, Zürich).

WITH VERY FRESH, WELL-PRESERVED ORIGINAL DUSTJACKET.

MY HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

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Eugen Rentsch Verlag Erlenbach, Zurich, Stuttgart. 1956. First edition, first printing.

Hardcover in linen with Photo-illustrated dustjacket. 222 x 282 mm. 128 pages. Photos: Gotthard Schuh. Foreword: Elisabeth Brock-Sulzer. Text in German.

Condition:
Book and dustjacket fresh and well-preserved with only light, just normal trace of use. No previous owner marks, no foxing; only the content sheet at the end of the book with the oversized flap like so often with creases; no other remarkable flaws or defects. Overall very fine condition.

Great book by Gotthard Schuh - with highly impressive photographs and with the original dustjacket.

"Gotthard Schuh was born in Berlin-Schöneberg to Swiss parents, the son of engineer Christian Heinrich Schuh. In 1902 the family moved to Aarau, where he attended elementary school and from 1914 the local high school. He began to paint and Otto Wyler was his first teacher. In 1916 he graduated from the trade school in Basel. During WW1 from 1917 Schuh was drafted into the border service as a soldier.
From 1919 he lived as a painter in Basel and Geneva. After a long trip to Italy in 1920, he settled in Munich as a painter. In 1926 he returned to Switzerland and set up a photography business, and in 1927 married Marga Zürcher from St. Gallen with whom he had a son Kaspar (born 1934). He moved to Zürich and from 1928 to 1931 held exhibitions of painting and joined the Basel artist group "Rot-Blau".
In 1931 his first photos were published in a Zürich magazine and in 1932 he held a photography exhibition in Paris, where he met Picasso, Léger and Braque.
From 1932 he joined the Zürcher Illustrierte under Arnold Kübler, working with Hans Staub and Paul Senn, and until 1937 Schuh also worked freelance for Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, Paris Match and Life. His assignments during 1938/1939 took him all over Europe and to Indonesia. He and Marga divorced in 1939.
After about ten years as a reporter he became the first picture editor for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He and Edwin Arnet created the NZZ supplement Das Wochenende, which showcased Swiss and international photography in addition to his own reportage.
From this period a significant part of his own photographic work illustrated books, of which the most successful was Inseln der Götter published in 1941, the result of his almost 11-month journey through Singapore, Java, Sumatra and Bali, undertaken just before the war. It was a mixture of reportage and self-reflection, with a poetic quality that, though individual images may be read either way, Schuh sometimes valued over documentary authenticity:
“Everyone just depicts what he sees, and everyone just sees what corresponds to his being.”
This is evident in the book Begegnungen which Schuh published in 1956, in which he combined older and more recent images in free association, in accord with the objectives of the ‘Kollegium Schweizerischer Photographen’, the Academy of Swiss Photographers which he founded together with Paul Senn, Walter Läubli, Werner Bischof and Jakob Tuggener, a loose group that promoted an ‘auteur’ emphasis. Their first exhibition in 1951 marked a renewal of photography in Switzerland after the conservatism and nationalism of the war years. Critic Edwin Arnet identified the ethos of the group:
"Their photography has abandoned the sphere of technical experimentation ..., the abstract and the avant-garde. It has become more wholesome, concentrating again more on the poetry of real things'.
In 1955 Edward Steichen selected two of Schuh's photographs for the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man seen by an audience of 9 million. One, taken in Italy, is a stolen image of lovers resting beside their discarded bicycles amongst long summer grass in an olive grove, while the other, taken in Java, shows a boy stretching balletically across the pavement as he plays marbles.
In 1944 Schuh married Annamarie Custer with whom he had two daughters, Claudia and Sybille. After 1960, he returned to painting.
Gotthard Schuh died in 1969 in Küsnacht on Lake Zurich. Fotostiftung Schweiz [de] administers the rights to Schuh's images, hosting photographs by Schuh on the online database of Keystone AG, Zürich, for public use."
(Wikipedia)