Gotthard Schuh

[4] He and Edwin Arnet created the NZZ supplement Das Wochenende, which showcased Swiss and international photography in addition to his own reportage.

From this period a significant part of his own photographic work illustrated books, of which the most successful was Inseln der Götter[5][6] published in 1941, the result of his almost 11-month journey through Singapore, Java, Sumatra and Bali, undertaken just before the war.

[7] It was a mixture of reportage and self-reflection, with a poetic quality that, though individual images may be read either way,[8] Schuh sometimes valued over documentary authenticity: “Everyone just depicts what he sees, and everyone just sees what corresponds to his being.”This is evident in the book Begegnungen which Schuh published in 1956, in which he combined older and more recent images in free association, in accord with the objectives of the ‘Kollegium Schweizerischer Photographen’, the Academy of Swiss Photographers which he founded together with Paul Senn, Walter Läubli, Werner Bischof and Jakob Tuggener, a loose group that promoted an ‘auteur’ emphasis.

[9]In 1955 Edward Steichen selected two of Schuh's photographs for the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man seen by an audience of 9 million.

One, taken in Italy, is a stolen image of lovers resting beside their discarded bicycles amongst long summer grass in an olive grove, while the other, taken in Java, shows a boy stretching balletically across the pavement as he plays marbles.