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About Swiss photographer, Emil BRUNNER (1908-1995)
Emil BRUNNER completed an apprenticeship as a ship's draftsman in Winterthur from 1925 to 1929. Along the way, the works photographer Emil WIEDERKEHR trained him as a photographer. After his apprenticeship, he spent six months photographing the cleanup and reconstruction of former World War I battlefields in France and Belgium. In the 1930s and 1940s, he ran his own photography business and traveled the world as a freelance photojournalist: Iceland, Spitsbergen, Africa, South America, Antarctica, Alaska, Finland, Tahiti, etc. The airplane pioneer Walter Mittelholzer taught him how to take photos from the airplane. In the winter of 1944/1945 he was a war reporter on the Western Front. In 1948 he moved to Braunwald. His photographs appeared in Life, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Atlantis, Le Vie del Mondo, Schweizer Illustrierte, Westermanns Monatshefte, Harper's Bazaar, Holiday (magazine)etc. Low-altitude photographs from Scandinavia and the Sahara have been published in magazines around the world.
Photo books by and with works by Emil BRUNNER
- 'Landigeist und Judenstempel. Erinnerungen einer Generation 1930-1945' (2002); 'Tausend Blicke. Kinderporträts von Emil Brunner. Bündner Oberland 1943/43' (2002); 'Bergkinder. Aus dem Archiv eines Fotoreporters 1943/44' (2004).
Exhibitions
- 2002: 'Tausend Blicke' (A Thousand Glances). Kinderporträts von Emil Brunner. Bündner Oberland 1943/43', Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur;
2008: 'Zwitserse bergkinderen', Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam;