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Then the war came, and with it the destruction of my «ivory tower».
The face of human suffering has risen to the forefront. I worked like a correspondent at the Swiss / Austrian border and saw thousands of people stranded there, waiting for days and weeks behind barbed wire. Children and the elderly, in their backs explosions of grenades and madness.
I had to leave in order to know the true face of the world. Our small comfortable life prevented many people from seeing the immense distress outside our borders. We paid our contribution to organisations giving humanitarian assistance and felt relieved of the need for any reflection.
After my first trip to Holland, France and Luxembourg, the magazine published ‘DU’ my impressions. But what outrage! The photo on the cover page of the injured child with his face destroyed frightened people who wanted peace.
At home, I looked with melancholy at the delicate pictures that I made before the
war and which earned me so much praise from my family and friends – but in my mind I saw hundreds of thousands of the unfortunate crushed by daily misery and who needed our help.
Werner Bischof, Autobiography