LAUSANNE.- To mark the centenary of the birth of Swiss photographer Werner Bischof (1916-1954), the Musée de l’Elysée is presenting a retrospective of his work entitled Point of View, produced by Magnum Photos (Paris).

The exhibition offers almost 200 original and sometimes unpublished prints selected from the Werner Bischof Estate (Zurich). The exhibition also displays contact sheets, books, magazines and private letters. Several projections give a contemporary approach to his work. The exhibition presents his work in Switzerland (1934-1944), Europe (1945-1950), Asia (1951-1952), and North and South America (1953-1954).

A second exhibition, produced by the Musée de l’Elysée and entitled Helvetica focuses exclusively on Bischof’s Swiss years, the period of training, studio work, fashion and advertising and then the war years in Switzerland during which he became a press photographer working for the magazine DU.

The exhibition Helvetica is the subject of the first publication of the « Collection - Musée de l’Elysée ».

Anonymous. Urban Life in Contemporary Photography From January 27 to May 1, 2015
To what extent do modern cities accommodate people as individuals? It is often said that today’s big cities are anonymous, swarming human masses in which individual citizens drown. However, the isolation within the mass of urban anonymity varies greatly. While it can be an excluding factor when the city does not want to recognize the individual – too poor or too different – it also offers millions of people the freedom to live in harmony side by side.

Curated from the Musée de l’Elysée’s collections, this exhibition explores various contemporary representations of anonymity in the city and its consequences on the human figure. Throughout its history, photography has studied city life, of which it forms a central part. These days, photographers rub shoulders with urban anonymity every day and through their multiple interventions, reveal its great complexity. Thanks to various formal devices, photography allows us to understand certain aspects of this anonymity – from the indistinguishable crowd to the most marginalized people, from standardized groups to anonymous heroes. Seriality, out of focus, black and white, digital manipulation or the form of photojournalism enable each photographer to accentuate certain characteristics, making it hard to resist offering offer a brief photographic lexicon of city life.

With artworks of Luc Delahaye, Suzanne Opton, Stéphane Couturier, Alexey Titarenko, Maurice Vouga, Frédéric Sautereau, Steve McCurry, LawickMüller, Hans Wilschut, and more.