“AN EXCEPTIONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC WITNESS OF HIS TIME”: SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF BISCHOFF’S FIRST PORTFOLIO COLLECTION, WITH 24 ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PLATES

BISCHOF, Werner. 24 Photos. Bern, Switzerland: L.M. Kohler, (1946). Quarto, 23 original plates (measuring 9 by 12 inches), loose as issued, original text booklet, original half cream cloth portfolio with mounted photographic print, cloth ties. $850.

First edition of Bischof’s premiere work, a scarce original portfolio with 24 black-and-white full-bleed photographic plates, 23 loose and one mounted, as issued, to front cover, with four-page booklet containing an essay by noted critic Manuel Gasser.

Swiss photographer Werner Bischoff “won renown as an exceptional photographic witness of his time… One of the first photographers to be invited into the Magnum Agency, Bischof… was trained as a painter and his visual reporting has the underpinnings of art,” revealing a pictorial richness that was always, in the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson, “structured above all around light” (New York Times). The original 24th plate, “Abstraktion,” is mounted on the front cover, as issued. Bischoff died tragically at age 38 in a car crash only nine days before Magnum founder Robert Capa was killed in Indochina. Text in German. See Parr & Badger II:235-6.

Plates clean and bright; faint bubbling to original portfolio A scarce, near-fine copy.