The years of the border occupation in Switzerland from 1914 to 1918 also left their mark in a particular genre of image and text document: the photo postcard. Sent in their thousands by soldiers to their loved ones at home, these postcards were not simply industrially-produced printed items, they were original photographs, often taken on site by amateurs and enlarged on photographic paper in very small editions: single and group portraits, kitchen or field-hospital scenes, men mixing socially or amusing themselves. The superficial harmlessness of these images makes them seem more like a collective sedative. Yet they also betray how the Great War was actually perceived, what preoccupied people at the everyday level and how they struggled in the face of their powerlessness. In recent years the Fotostiftung Schweiz has compiled more than 1,000 of these touching witnesses of that era, which are now being exhibited for the first time.

Exhibition leaflet