Peter Werner Häberlin

Häberlin, Peter Werner ( May 25, 1912–July 9, 1953) was a Swiss photographer noted for his picture series of Saharan Africa made between 1949 and 1952.

Biography

Peter Häberlin was born in 1912 in Kreuzlingen near Konstanz on Lake Constance (the Obersee Bodensee) and grew up in Singen, in Germany, just across the Swiss border. From 1928-1931 he took up an apprenticeship with a pastry chef in Berneck, Switzerland, at the eastern end of Lake Constance.

From from 1932 to 1934 he journeyed on foot from Switzerland to Italy and then to Tunisia and Algeria. In Constantine, Algeria, Häberlin worked in the famous Pâtisserie Viennoise to restore his travel funds. He returned via Morocco and Gibraltar and made other trips in Europe.

In 1938/9 Häberlin studied sculpture and photography at the Hansischen Hochschule, Hamburg. He then enrolled in photography at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich from 1940 to 1943. His work was published in Atlantis and Du. In 1948 he married Jolita Coughlin, an American student. He undertook four extensive tours of North Africa over 1949-1952 on the established caravan routes, on foot, by bicycle and on transport, crossing the Saharan desert until he reached the North of Cameroon.

His frank, full-face photograph of a girl with braided hair and decorative cicatrices on her cheeks and nose, taken in bright sunlight is typical of his work in Northern Africa; made out of his curiosity about a timeless, unspoilt culture. It was selected by curator Edward Steichen for the world-touring Museum of Modern Art  exhibition The Family of Man, seen by 9 million visitors and published in a catalogue which has sold 4 million copies and has never been out of print.

Death and legacy

Shortly after returning from his last trip, Häberlin died in a tragic accident in Zürich in 1953, in the midst of his preparations for a new expedition to Mexico. His estate is located in the Fotostiftung Switzerland, Winterthur.

Some of his photographs were published posthumously in 1956 in the book Yallah, completed by Häberlin’s father with the help of the American author Paul Bowles and with a foreword by Bowles. The New Yorker, reported that it was the work “of one of the great photographers of our times, capable of showing, as only art can, what would otherwise have remained hidden”.

Exhibitions

Peter W. Häberlin: Sahara. Fotografie 1949-1952, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome, February 02, 2017-March 12, 2017