Emanuel Gyger

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Emanuel Gyger (born March 6, 1886 in Achseten near Frutigen , † October 2, 1951 in Adelboden ) was a Swiss photographer . With his mountain photos and postcards of the Bernese and Valais Alps, he shaped the photography style of the entire region. He was the founder of the Gyger family of photographers based in Adelboden.

Life

Emanuel Gyger was the youngest of six children in a mountain farming family in Achseten. After graduating from school, he started an apprenticeship as a baker-confectioner, which he broke off. He then completed his photography apprenticeship with Fritz Gysling in Spiez . Before Gyger, the photographer A. Stähli worked in Adelboden, but because of his age he gave up his job and moved away. Emanuel Gyger and his brother-in-law Hermann Eggimann filled this gap when they opened a photo shop in Adelboden in 1909. In 1910 they moved to the recently acquired dependence of the Hotel “Regina” on Dorfstrasse. In 1930 Hermann Eggimann withdrew from participating in the business for health reasons. The new business partner was Arnold Klopfenstein, a former Gyger apprentice. They renamed the photo shop “Gyger und Klopfenstein”.

An important source of income was the sale of self-made postcards with mountain motifs. They also sold cameras and photo accessories. In the 1930s the shop experienced a great boom, so that they employ up to 11 people and temporarily run a branch in Vorwand. While the years of the First World War were an economic challenge for the photo business , the US soldiers interned in Adelboden during the Second World War brought a lot of sales. They bought many picture postcards and cameras and had their amateur films developed by Gyger und Klopfenstein. Emanuel Gyger and Arnold Klopfenstein continued the business until Gyger's death in 1951. After that, his nephew Adolf Gyger took over his share. The photo shop and a postcard publisher in Adelboden are still owned by the descendants of those two families.

plant

Emanuel Gyger had lost an eye early in his life. In order to be able to correctly assess distances while photographing and to perceive objects vividly at all, he had to relearn how to see. This was one of the main reasons why he was able to differentiate between light and dark contrasts better than other photographers. It was precisely this fact that gave him the ability to “make his black and white pictures full of tension”.

Although Gyger also worked with wooden cameras, he used the panorama camera with the 9x29 format, which was new at the time, in particular. This contributed greatly to the popularity of Gyger's photographs. Together with his business partner and mountain guide Arnold Klopfenstein, he usually went hiking for weeks through the Alps , where most of his photo motifs come from. Typical of Gyger's photographs is the depiction of the “rocky, massive structure of the mountain, its force and inaccessibility”.

Publications

  • with G. Maurer: Adelboden in picture and rhyme. Cover: Souvenir Adelboden . G. Maurer AG. Spiez 1939.

literature

  • Paul Hugger: The Bernese Oberland and its photographers. Krebser, Thun 1995.
  • Daniel Müller-Jentsch: Emanuel Gyger & Arnold Klopfenstein. Ski photography pioneers. Switzerland 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Hugger: The Bernese Oberland and its photographers. Krebser, Thun 1995, p. 16.
  2. ^ Paul Hugger: The Bernese Oberland and its photographers. Krebser, Thun 1995, p. 16.
  3. ^ Sylvia Bärtschi-Baumann: Emanuel Gyger. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
personal data
SURNAME Gyger, Emanuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Achseten
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1951
Place of death Adelboden