Carl August Koch

Carl August Koch (born May 25, 1845 in Zurich ; † January 5, 1897 in Schaffhausen ) was a Swiss photographer .

Photo from the 1890s

Live and act

Koch lost his parents at the age of twelve and then grew up in the Zurich orphanage. A friend of his late father made him enthusiastic about photography at a young age and spent a lot of time in his studio. Since this work was not sufficiently recognized at the time, he had to begin an apprenticeship as a saddler . On the wandering he came to Marseille , where he entered and after 1870 as an apprentice in a photographic business was able to prove his skills. After working for photographers in other cities, he had gathered enough knowledge and skills to set up his own business in Schaffhausen on March 1, 1879. He later ran the Tronel & Koch atelier with Louis Alphonse Tronel (1830–1903) from April 1, 1881 to September 30, 1886 , before buying his own house at Vordersteig 2 and setting up his studio there. His business partner had withdrawn from the company in exchange for a severance payment of 10,000 francs and gave him all the apparatus, utensils and all of the images. Koch's photo studio, founded in Schaffhausen in 1892, remained in the family's possession, his grandson Carl Hans Koch took over the business in 1947 and founded the Sinar company there the following year .

In addition to his work as a portrait photographer, he devoted himself to high mountain shots, with which he made a name for himself among alpinists - he was himself a member of the Randen Section of the Alpine Club - and was awarded prizes at exhibitions.

From 1894 to 1897, Carl August Koch was president of the Swiss Association of Photographers. In this capacity he campaigned for the establishment of the photographic college in Zurich, which was set up at the Zurich School of Applied Arts in 1898 , and for copyright protection for photographic works. He founded the Schaffhausen Landscape Archive, which to this day collects architectural and landscape photos of Schaffhausen and the surrounding area.

literature

Swiss Association of Photographers. Carl Koch - Schaffhausen † .. In: Photographische Correspondenz. Organ of the Photographische Gesellschaft in Vienna , year 1897, 34th year, No. 437, pp. 80–82 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / phc
Andreas Schiendorfer: Once upon a time in the country: Pictures from the canton of Schaffhausen . The most beautiful shots from the Koch photo archive. Meier, Schaffhausen 2006, ISBN 978-3-85801-093-3 .
Photography in Switzerland from 1840 until today . Arthur Niggli, Teufen 1974, ISBN 978-3-7212-0081-2 .

Web links

Commons : Carl August Koch - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Urs Tillmanns: Koch, Carl August. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Carl August Koch on the website of the Swiss Photo Foundation
Sinar History on the Sinar AG website. Retrieved June 25, 2018.

Individual evidence

↑ Hans Ulrich Wipf: Louis Alphonse Tronel . In: Arpad St. Andreànzsky, et al. (Ed.): Schaffhauser biographies . tape 81 , no. VI . Historical Association of the Canton of Schaffhausen, 2007, ISSN 0259-3599 , p. 338 f .

personal data
SURNAME	Koch, Carl August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Swiss photographer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 25, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH	Zurich
DATE OF DEATH	January 5, 1897
Place of death	Schaffhausen

[1] Hans Ulrich Wipf: Louis Alphonse Tronel . In: Arpad St. Andreànzsky, et al. (Ed.): Schaffhauser biographies . tape 81 , no. VI . Historical Association of the Canton of Schaffhausen, 2007, ISSN 0259-3599 , p. 338 f .