Bosshard studied pedagogy and art history in Zurich and Florence and trained as a primary school teacher at the Kantonsschule Küsnacht.
His exotic pictures from faraway countries were highly sought after and he received commissions from various magazines, such as the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung and the Münchner Illustrierte Presse.
Only three foreign journalists were admitted to the enthronement and the festivities: the American William L. Shirer, the Austrian Harald Lechenperg and Walter Bosshard.
Paul Hofer, Bosshard's godchild and heir, bequeathed the written legacy to the Archive for Contemporary History (AfZ) of ETH Zurich.
The holdings comprise diary-like notes and collections of articles, including almost all of the NZZ reports from 1939 to 1956, as well as documents and manuscripts relating to his books, supplemented by 20,000 positives and negatives, slides, glass plates, large albums and films.
The Fotostiftung Schweiz [de], which owns the majority of the collection of negatives and supplementary materials, carried out a project co-financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation together with the AfZ, the result of which was a complete inventory of both holdings, a book publication and, in 1997/98, an exhibition in the Kunsthaus Zürich on Boshard's work.