Joint UMAG Programme: Guided Viewing: Bosshard in China With Dr Peter Pfrunder

The Executive Committee is delighted to host a morning coffee with Dr Peter Pfrunder, the Director of Fotostiftung in Zurich. Dr Pfrunder will give us a guided tour of Bosshard in China, a comprehensive exhibition of photos and documentary films produced by Swiss photo journalist Walter Bosshard in China in the 1930s. This exhibition is supported by the Swiss Consulate in Hong Kong and the Museum Society as part of our 30th anniversary celebration.

Bosshard was one of the early and internationally famous journalist. He lived in China from 1933 through 1939 and travel extensively. The exhibition is organised in different parts and it gives insights into Bosshard’s travels and the city and landscapes he encountered, the social conditions he witnessed, and the political personalities he met. Among other famous personalities, Bosshard visited with Mao Zedong, and he took photographs and very early sound-less films to document him and his peers.

Following earlier exhibitions at UMAG of Magnum photographers and their oeuvres in the West, Bosshard in China exemplifies a contemporary’s work in East Asia, and documents the land and people during a time when China underwent much change. Also during that era, photo journalism was little developed, few journalists travelled as extensively as Bosshard did in China, and so his works testify to the kind of image of the East published photos disseminated in the West.
Resource Person
Dr. Peter Pfrunder, was born in Singapore and grew up in Switzerland. He studied German, as well as European and English literature in Zurich, Montpellier and Berlin. From 1995 until 1998, Pfrunder served as co-director of the Forum for Swiss History and the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum in Schwyz. Since 1998, he is the director and curator of the Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur. He publishes extensively on photography and is specialist on photo journalist Walter Bosshard and his work.