Peter Bock-Schroeder, the accomplished photojournalist
The 20th century gave rise to a new kind of photographer; both social reformer and globe-trotting photojournalist who hunted news stories for the great tabloid empires. Photography had entered an era of unparalleled creativity, propelled in part by sophisticated new picture magazines.
After Word War 2, Europe was physically and mentally destroyed. Newly founded picture magazines became the main source of information. The ability of these magazines to bring their audiences up to date with current affairs, and society's interest for a better understanding of the global context led to a fast growing visual media industry, which established a new type of photographer - the accomplished photojournalist.
As passionate photo reporter Peter Bock-Schroeder travelled the world. He was interested in people and their cultures and spent months and sometimes years travelling. His respectful behaviour won him the trust of the local communities he visited. As a result, they lost their reserve and let him be part of their lives. He mastered his camera, but technique had secondary significance for him. Regardless on which occasion he pressed the shutter, his photos always tell a story.
In 1964, the editors of Quick, the groundbreaking German photo news magazine, published the work of a dozen of its leading contributors. Each of the photo journalists included in the volume, "Report Der Reporter", were invited to discuss their art in an accompanying essay. Among the photographers highlighted was Peter Bock-Schroeder, who vividly chronicled life on the far flung fringes of the post war world in his journeys as a foreign correspondent for Stern and Revue magazines, as well as Quick. - Steve Dougherty
Bock-Schroeder's camera captured some of the last moments in the disappearing lives of salmon fishermen in Oregon, the indigenous peoples of Alaska, Bolivia and Peru and the displaced peasants of Soviet Russia. In regions as distant from one another as the war-ravaged cities of his own Germany, the remote mining towns of Bolivia and the devastated former battleground at Stalingrad, Bock-Schroeder chronicled worlds in collision.
You don't need special cameras or highly expensive photographic equipment for landscape photography. What counts is the perception, the eye. Nor do you have to travel half way around the world to take landscape photos. A street you see every day of your life and that never seemed to be of any particular interest can suddenly become a fascinating motif if you really look at it closely. Just as tastes have changed in the art of painting over the decades, they have also changed in photography, and especially in landscape photography.
Peter Bock-Schroeder’s story reads a bit like a movie; larger than life with plenty of plot twists
Where does my fascination for photography come from and how did I become a photo journalist?