From Arcadia to Atlanta

Swiss artist Frank Buchser gained renown as a world traveller with a penchant for adventure. His paintings and sketches are impressive testimony to the artist’s wide range of interests. But there has been little attention thus far to the fact that, during his sojourns abroad, Buchser was also a keen collector of photographs. In 1896, some 200 photos entered the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett together with his posthumous studies. The significance of the portfolio does not end with the question of its influence on the artist’s own work, for the prints include major masterpieces of early photography, from views of the Roman Campagna to pictures from the American Civil War and impressions of the English coast. Made available to the public for the first time, this valuable collection will be presented in dialogue with Buchser’s own works.