Päuli Jucker, Zürich, Switzerland, around 1941 (c) Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos 

The AIC organizes on Sunday April 24th, 2016, a Private Guided Tour of the Musée Elysée in Lausanne, during the Werner Bischof Exhibition.

We are delighted and honoured to have Tatyana Franck, director of the Museum, as our guide.

The Private Tour will be followed by a Lebanese Cocktail Dinatoire.

 (c) Reto Duriet 

Tatyana Franck
Director of the Musée de l’Elysée
Tatyana Franck was born in Geneva in 1984 and has been Director of the Musée de l’Elysée since March 1st 2015. Between 2007 and 2015, she was the Director of the Claude Picasso Archives in Geneva, which houses Pablo Picasso’s works as well as major photographic collections including the David Douglas Duncan collection.

A specialist in modern and contemporary art, Tatyana Franck dedicates much of her professional and private life to photography. She was, among other things, curator of several international exhibitions including: Les Caran d’Ache de Picasso (2015, Interlaken) ; Picasso : Creatures and Creativity (2015, Las Vegas) ; La Part Animale (2014, Paris) ; Yu Xing, Le Cours d’un fleuve (2013, Paris) ; Prune Nourry, Terracotta Daughters, Holy Daughters, Holy River (2011, traveling exhibitions) ; Picasso at Work, Through the Lens of David Douglas Duncan (2011, Museo Picasso, Malaga — Kunstmuseum Picasso, Münster — La Piscine, Roubaix — Geneva’s Museum of Art and History — Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City). 

Tatyana Franck is Chief Editor of the magazine ELSE published by the Musée de l’Elysée. She is involved in the cultural policies of several renowned institutions, and holds various honorary posts in Switzerland:

• Member of the Executive Board, Pôle Muséal, Lausanne
• Member of the Governing Board, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur
• Member of the Governing Board, Art Museums of Switzerland
• Member of the Governing Board, Institut Suisse pour la Conservation de la Photographie (ISCP), Neuchâtel
• Chief administrative officer of the Fondation René Burri, Lausanne

On an international level, Tatyana Franck is:

• Treasurer of the Board of Directors, Fondation Henri Cartier- Bresson
• Member of the Board of Directors, Amis de la Maison Rouge – Fondation Antoine de Galbert
• Member of the Board of Directors, Sotheby’s European Advisory Board

With degrees in History of Art and Art Law, she is currently completing the EMBA Global-Asia (Columbia Business School/ London Business School/Hong Kong University).

Werner Bischof – Point of View and Helvetica: 27 January – 1 May 2016

To mark the centenary of Swiss photographer and photo journalist Werner Bischof (1916-1954), the Musée de l’Elysée is presenting a retrospective of his work entitled Point of View, produced by Magnum Photos (Paris). The exhibition offers almost 200 prints from the Werner Bischof Estate (Zurich) along with some video projections. The exhibition presents his work in Switzerland (1934-1944), Europe (1945-1950), Asia (1951-1952), and North and South America (1953-1954).

A second exhibition entitled Helvetica focuses exclusively on Bischof’s Swiss years, the period of training, studio work, fashion and advertising and then the war years in Switzerland as a press photographer working for the Zurich magazine DU.  (From l'Elysée website, edited)

Werner Bischof was born in Zürich and grew up in Waldshut, Germany. In 1936, he graduated from the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich.

From 1939, he was an independent photographer for various magazines. He travelled extensively from 1945 to 1949 through nearly all European countries from France to Romania and from Norway to Greece. His works on the devastation in post-war Europe established him as one of the foremost photojournalists of the time.

He became associated with Magnum Photos in 1948, joining its original five founding photographers: Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, David Seymour, and Ernst Haas.

The focus of much of Bischof's post-war humanist photography was showing the poverty and despair around him in Europe, tempered with his desire to travel the world, conveying the beauty of nature and humanity.

In 1951, he went to India for Lifemagazine, and then to Japan and Korea. For Paris Match he worked as a war reporter in Vietnam. In 1954, he travelled through Mexico and Panama, before flying to Peru, where he embarked on a trip through the Andes to the Amazonas that May. There, his car fell off a cliff on a mountain road, and all three passengers were killed. (From wikipedia, edited.)

From Robert Race, Chair of AIC Cultural Events:

In March, I joined another group for a guided tour of the Bishoff exhibtions. Even in French, it was much more interesting than I had expected. These photographs focus on a particularly important period in time and place – not just Europe, but the immediacy of post-war Europe; not just Vietnam, but the Indochina war; not just Korea, but the Korean War. From his home in Austria, he got on his bycicle to tour the devastation in Europe. During the Korean War, he photgraphed the “re-education” camps for North Korean and Chinese POWs run by the US Army. (I did not know we did that!)

Bischof was there at the begining of Pax Americana and The Cold War, the forces that shaped our globalized world today. In his short life of 38 years, he saw and photographed a significat era that we and future generations need to remember.

I am particularly looking forward to a tour led by the museum's new director, and in English. Some AIC members will fondly remember the last Cultural Event at l'Elyées for the Los Angeles exhibition, with past director Bill Ewing.