// Workers AI · dad joke modeWho's Paul Senn? Senn-sational.
Paul Senn | |
|---|---|
| Born | 14 August 1901 Rothrist, Switzerland |
| Died | 25 April 1953 (aged 51) Bern, Switzerland |
| Known for | Photojournalism |
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Paul Senn (14 August 1901 – 25 April 1953) was a Swiss photographer and one of the leading Swiss photojournalists between 1930 and 1950. He documented everyday life and social conditions in Switzerland, Europe and the United States.
Biography
[edit]Paul Senn was born on 14 August 1901 in Rothrist.[1][2] He completed an apprenticeship as a graphic artist in Bern between 1917 and 1921.[1] From 1922 to 1930, he continued his training as a graphic designer and advertising consultant in France, Spain, Italy, England, Belgium and Germany.[3]
From 1924 to 1930, Senn worked as a graphic designer for the Basler Nachrichten.[3] In 1930, he established a studio in Bern and produced photographic reports for several newspapers and magazines.[1] He lived and worked at Junkerngasse 3 in Bern’s lower Old Town.[4] In 1930, Arnold Kübler recruited him to the Zürcher Illustrierte, where he joined the magazine’s core photographic team.[3] He remained with the magazine until 1941.[1] His work for the Zürcher Illustrierte and later Du brought him national recognition during the 1930s and 1940s.[5] He contributed to more than 40 Swiss and foreign illustrated magazines.[6]
In 1951, Senn co-founded the Kollegium Schweizerischer Photographen.[3] The group promoted photography shaped by the photographer's personal perspective and sought recognition of photography as an independent art form.[3] He died of cancer in Bern on 25 April 1953.[1][2][7]
Work
[edit]Senn produced socially focused reportages in Europe and the United States and was an early practitioner of colour photography.[6] During his first visit to Spain in 1933, Senn visited Pablo Casals.[8] Between 1937 and 1939, he returned to Spain and produced reports on the Spanish Civil War.[8] He made his first journey to the United States in 1939.[7]
During the Second World War, Senn served as an army photographer. His subjects included the Swiss mobilisation, work on the National Redoubt and the entry of French troops into Switzerland in 1940.[1]
Senn's photographs of Swiss farmers and workers were published with Arnold Kübler in the 1943 volume Bauer und Arbeiter, which was associated with Switzerland’s policy of spiritual national defence.[1][5][8] Other reportages examined juvenile institutions, Thorberg prison, the Waldau psychiatric hospital and children placed with farming families.[5]
He also documented everyday scenes in Bern’s Old Town, including tradespeople working outdoors, children playing in the streets and washing carried out on rooftops.[4] As a resident of the lower Old Town, he knew many local people and often photographed them informally and unobtrusively.[4]
Senn photographed the Rivesaltes camp in France in 1942.[5] During a journey to Lyon in 1943, he photographed the exhumation of French resistance fighters killed by the Nazis.[5] The images depicted the violence more starkly than was customary in Swiss press coverage of wartime atrocities.[5] They were published in Die Nation and the socialist magazine Aufstieg.[5]
In 1944, Senn and the journalist Peter Surava documented inhumane conditions at the Sonnenberg boys’ home in Kriens.[9] The home required the boys to perform hard physical work, provided little education and subjected them to mistreatment.[10] The reporting led to the home’s closure and the conviction of its last director.[10] In a separate 1944 report, Senn and Surava documented the case of a boy who had been sexually abused by his foster family.[5]
From 1944 to 1947, he travelled through several European countries, partly on behalf of the Red Cross and Swiss relief organisations.[8] In 1945, he photographed war-damaged Cologne and post-war Paris.[1]
In 1946, Senn returned to the United States on assignment for the Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung, with a particular focus on Swiss emigrant communities.[7] He travelled across the country, visiting major cities and settlements established by Swiss emigrants.[7] On this journey, he began using colour transparencies alongside black-and-white film.[7] In New York, he concentrated on workers, children and marginalised people rather than the city’s familiar tourist attractions.[7] His colour work included a photographic report on Coney Island.[5]
His two United States journeys resulted in approximately 10,000 negatives, 1,500 colour transparencies and 80 reports.[7] In 1951, he undertook a journey through North and South America.[8]
Senn’s background in graphic design influenced the formal composition of his photographs.[1] Their pronounced tonal contrasts often gave the images a dramatic effect.[1] His social-documentary photographs drew attention to the emotional experience of the people he depicted.[1]
Legacy
[edit]Senn is regarded as one of the leading Swiss photojournalists between 1930 and 1950.[5] He is also recognised as a chronicler of everyday life in Switzerland during the economic crisis and war years.[6]
In 1982, the Gottfried Keller Foundation deposited Senn’s archive with the Kunstmuseum Bern.[4] The holdings contain around 90,000 negatives, material from approximately 2,000 reportages and 1,000 colour transparencies.[3] His work was shown posthumously at the Swiss Foundation for Photography in 1981, while the Kunstmuseum Bern's first comprehensive retrospective in 2007 brought renewed attention to his little-known post-war colour photography.[3][5][6] Further exhibitions were held in Perpignan and Rivesaltes in 2019, with the latter devoted to his photography of the Spanish Civil War.[3]
Gallery
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References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Magnaguagno, Guido (18 December 2012). "Paul Senn". Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS) (in German). Retrieved 4 August 2026.
- 1 2 "Paul Senn". SIKART Lexicon on Art in Switzerland (in German). Swiss Institute for Art Research. Retrieved 4 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Paul Senn". Fotostiftung Schweiz (in German). Retrieved 4 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 Sury, Alexander (8 November 2025). "Paul Senn: Fotograf dokumentierte Berner Altstadt 1930-1953". Tages-Anzeiger (in German). Retrieved 5 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Paul Senn, die Ikone der Schweizer Fotoreportage". SWI swissinfo (in German). 7 July 2007. Retrieved 4 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 "Paul Senn". SWI swissinfo (in German). 12 June 2007. Retrieved 4 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Sury, Alexander (6 February 2026). "Paul Senn: Schweizer Fotoreporter und die USA-Auswanderer". Der Bund (in German). Retrieved 4 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Schürpf, Markus (28 January 2026). "Paul Senn". fotoCH (in German). Retrieved 4 August 2026.
- ↑ Hafner, Wolfgang. "Missbrauch in Heimen – Pädagogischer Ansatz (II)". Schweizerische Kirchenzeitung (in German). Retrieved 5 August 2026.
- 1 2 "Erziehungsheim in Kriens - Gedenktafel zur Erinnerung an dunkles Kapitel enthüllt". Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF). 21 October 2017. Retrieved 5 August 2026.
