Werner Bischof (1916-1954) is unanimously considered one of the masters of black and white photography. Now, thanks to new archival research and painstaking restoration of the original negatives, a wide selection of his color photographs is presented here for the first time, between studio experimentation and reportage, surprises and confirmations.

Werner Bischof (Zurich 1916 – Trujillo, Peru 1954) became a member of the Magnum agency in 1949; he is known almost exclusively for his black and white photographs, although the color photographs he published during his lifetime did not go unnoticed and, at least in one case (the portrait of a Dutch boy scarred by shrapnel from a German mine, published in 1946 on the cover of the magazine "Du"), provoked even vehement reactions.
Now for the first time a book reveals the various aspects of Bischof's color production, between experimentation and reportage. Of particular interest is a corpus of photographs he made with the Devin Tri-Color: a machine of great precision, capable of obtaining vivid colors through the simultaneous exposure of three 6.5 x 9 cm glass plates. With this camera originally conceived for working in the studio, Bischof photographed, among other things, European cities devastated by the Second World War.
The book also contains photographs taken by Bischof with the Rolleiflex and with the Leica.

Published on the occasion of the 2023 exhibition at the MASI, Lugano.