RICHARD DE TSCHARNER
For the past twenty years Richard de Tscharner has been pursuing a singular path in the fertile field of landscape photography by focusing on what the eminent historian Fernand Braudel called “la longue durée”, i.e. the Earth`s crust considered on the time-scale of millennia, barely touched in this profound sense by the hand of Man. This quest has taken him to remote regions of the globe, to sites far removed from current civilisation.
Richard de Tscharner was born in Berne in 1947. After his school years in the Swiss capital, he continued his studies at the University of Geneva, before joining the renowned private bank Lombard Odier & Cie, where he remained until he retired from business at the end of 2006 to devote himself to photography, a practice which had fascinated him since his youth.
In recent years, de Tscharner has had several solo exhibitions in Geneva, most recently at Sotheby`s, and even more recently in Italy where the city of Todi, Umbria, honoured him in 2021 with a retrospective exhibition in three separate urban sites. His work has also been included in a number of prestigious international travelling exhibitions, including Civilization: The Way We Live Now, shown in museums in Korea, China, New Zealand, Australia, France, and this year in Italy. His work is also included in Flora Photographica, a publication by Thames & Hudson released this summer, while a touring exhibition, Flora Imaginaria, is currently on display in Sarasota, Florida.
Richard de Tscharner is currently completing a book project on the Swiss Alpine passes in collaboration with curator, museum director, and author William A. Ewing, philosopher and Professor of Religious Studies Frédéric Möri, Brigadier aD Dr. Daniel Lätsch, and the head of Implenia during the construction of the St. Gotthard Base Tunnel Anton Affentranger, with a foreword by former President of the Swiss Confederation Doris Leuthard. The book will be published next year by Scheidegger & Spiess and will count as one of the most complete studies ever undertaken on the Alpine passes in Switzerland.
