Georg Gerster

Georg Gerster ( born April 30, 1928 in Winterthur) is a journalist and a pioneer of flight photography.

Life

1954 doctorate Georg Gerster at the University of Zurich in German. Until 1956 he worked as a scientific editor for the Zurich " World Week ". Since then he has worked as a freelance journalist with a focus on science reportage and aerial photography. In this photographic art he made in the 1950s and 1960s, pioneering work, since he still holds a leading position. This affects not only technology and quality of its flight images, but also the universality and internationality of topics. Such a work of aerial photography can be found at most with Yann Arthus- Bertrand.

From 1959 produced Gerster picture stories and picture books. Since the 1960's he documented in over 100 countries on all continents archaeological sites of all kinds: from Stonehenge to the Great Wall of China, from the temples of Abu Simbel, which had to make way for the Aswan Dam, up to Aztec cult sites and monumental stone carvings in the California desert. But even mountains and deserts, coasts and lakes, he has recorded photographically in aerial photographs agricultural and industrial landscapes.

Georg Gerster in 1976 was awarded the Prix Nadar. His photos were featured in solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Japan and the USA and are always present in publications.

Work

Georg Gerster published photos and texts regularly in internationally renowned periodicals such as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the National Geographic Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine and the magazine Geo.

His photographs are not only a technical masterpiece and precise documents, but also offer special beauty in their views of the world. Often the same his pictures by the unusual sight, and the surprising, strange or exotic subjects rather rebus puzzles, which he is able to explain through his journalistic trained comment so that the viewer must care about his concerns inevitably: he is concerned with the preservation of the Earth.

Gerster is on the one hand visually the beauty of the landscape out that he likes vertically from above - often from a low height - photographed. On the other hand, he shows in his comments on getting the interlinkages how nature is at risk worldwide despite or because of their beauty by civilization, overuse, erosion, or technology and mechanization. That he wants to not only make " pretty pictures " to show his captions and book texts that bear witness to an in-depth examination of the photographed landscape, its inhabitants, including the conditions of life and its history. A particular concern is the beginning of the Gerster - Been preservation of historical and archaeological sites - at least photographic.

Exhibitions

• 2003 aerial photographs by Georg Gerster. Ruhrlandmuseum food.
• 2006 Georg Gerster. Swissair posters. Neues Museum Nuremberg
• 2007 The Past from Above. The British Museum, London
• 2010 Hungary's heritage in flight pictures by Georg Gerster, Pecs,
• What we live in 2013. Aerial photographs by Georg Gerster. Fotostiftung Switzerland

Publications (selection )

• Nubia - Gold Country on the Nile. Artemis, Zurich / Stuttgart 1964.
• With Christiane Desroches -Noble Court: The World Saves Abu Simbel. Koska, Vienna 1968.
• Churches in rock. Discoveries in Ethiopia. Publisher carbon hammer, Stuttgart 1968.
• Ethiopia. The roof of Africa. Atlantis Verlag, Zurich / Freiburg 1974.
• Man on his earth. A flight image. Freiburg, Zurich 1975, ISBN 3-7611-0468-5.
• Bread and salt. Basel / Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-7643-1692-6.
• Flight images. Basel / Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-7643-1697-7.
• Flight into the past - Archaeological Sites of mankind in flight pictures. Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8296-0094-1.
• With Ralf B. Wartke: Aerial photos from Syria. From ancient to modern times. Publisher Philip of Saverne, Mainz 2003.
• Worldviews. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2004 ISBN 3-8296-0154-9. (70 Aerial photos from the six continents - a quintessence of the life's work )
• Aero graphics. Poster Calendar (annual), 2005: ISBN 3-8318-1239- X, 2006: ISBN 3-8318-2154-2.
• Charlotte Trumpler (eds.): Flight into the past. Archaeological Sites of mankind in flight pictures. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich, 2005. 4th Edition, ISBN 3-8296-0190-5.
• John Nollé and Hertha Schwarz: With the eyes of the gods. Aerial photos of ancient and Byzantine Graecia. With aerial photographs by Georg Gerster. Philip of Saverne, Mainz 2006, ISBN 978-3-8053-3379-5.