Agricultural service, 1946
"At 19, I was introduced to the agricultural service, as it was mandatory for teenagers during the Second World War. I helped on a farm near Kemptthal for three weeks. Fortunately, the farmer tolerated me bringing my camera."
René Groebli
Agricultural service, 1946
René Groebli
Agricultural service, 1946
René Groebli
Zürich, 1947-1952
"In my hometown, I worked for various newspapers and magazines, and I received my first small advertising orders. Many photographs were taken of nightlife. I was fascinated by stages, clubs and arenas. "
René Groebli
Zürich, 1947-1952
René Groebli
Zürich, 1947-1952, Trester Club
René Groebli
Early Work, 1945-1950
"As an 18-year-old, I began to experiment with my father's Rolleiflex. This is what sparked my passion for photography. During my time at the trade craft school, it irked me to have to try to capture movement in a static frame. The results were fascinating to me but were violently rejected by the teachers."
René Groebli
Das Auge der Liebe, 1952
"Taken after our belated honeymoon in Paris, these shots were intended as a personal souvenir. 1954 originated as an artistic essay, published under the title of 'The Eye of Love'."
René Groebli
Paris, 1948
"My first trip abroad took me on the night train from Zurich to Paris. With my Rolleiflex in hand, I discovered the big city."
René Groebli
London, 1949
"A few days before Christmas I was in foggy, bombed out London, in the Victoria train station. For two weeks I wandered around aimlessly with the camera."
René Groebli
Crystal Palace Park London, 1951
"In London I discovered the abandoned Crystal Palace Park, which had been used by the military during the war. The overgrown statues gave me the idea that they were being liberated from the lush vegetation."
René Groebli
Rail Magic, 1949
"My first big work led me to France alongside the track, in stations and on a steam locomotive. The result was a small, printed photo map, Rail Magic."
René Groebli
Rail Magic, 1949
René Groebli
René Groebli is the missing link for Swiss photography in the second half of the 20th century. He combines the romantic in photography with the vision of the technicians, the modernists.
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René Groebli, swissinfo.ch
His pictures not only summed up the times, they gave you a sense of the time. Only the greatest visionaries in America and Germany understood these new characters, and the artistic statements they made along with Groebli became a lexicon for the medium of the future.
René Groebli, born in 1927 in Zurich, spent only a half year studying in Hans Finsler’s class at the (photography) trade craft school in Zurich. Then he served an apprenticeship as a documentary cameraman. Groebli wanted to understand the essence of movement and the tantalizing energy of seeing things anew. He visited London and Paris, where he began his big project “Rail Magic”. His work “The Eye of Love” is a poem to his young wife and tells of a trip to France in the character and lexicon of French poetic realism. For two years he succeeded in finding work as a war reporter.
He gave up photojournalism after a brief stint and established a photo studio in the mid-1950s for advertising and industrial photography. Groebli specialized in color photography and experimentation with the dye-transfer process. A US magazine honored him in 1957 as “Master of Color”.
(Text: Daniele Muscionico, from the preface of the illustrated book, Early Work, 1945-1955, Zurich: Sturm & Drang Verlag, 2015)
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