Photographer and artist Andrea Garbald (1877–1958) dedicated an important part of his oeuvre to the women of his native Val Bregaglia, in the Swiss canton of Grisons. As the first and, for a long time, the only photographer in the valley, he ran his own photo studio in addition to an optician’s store in the village of Castasegna. Yet instead of making his artistic work public, Garbald kept his it in his attic. His estate was only discovered in the mid-1980s and displayed in public for the first time in 2014 in a major exhibition.

Andrea Garbald’s portraits collected in this volume show women of different ages and social classes and go far beyond the stiff official portraits that were common at the time. The sitters’ posture, clothes, faces, and their eyes speak volumes: the photographs demonstrate a special intimacy and empathy towards the people portrayed. At the same time, they reveal the development of the medium and its visual language.

This new book provides an in-depth look at Garbald’s unusual oeuvre and offers an insight into the subtle creativity of this local pioneer.

Text in Italian and German.