Heinrich Helfenstein’s Photography

The Swiss architectural photographer Heinrich Helfenstein (1946–2020) trained as a linguist, his approach shaped by semiology and post-structuralism. Having worked as Aldo Rossi’s assistant at ETH in the 1970s, his early photographs illustrated the latter’s Scientific Autobiography, instigating a delicate, absorbing dialogue between images and words. Helfenstein photographed the works of architects including Diener & Diener, Peter Zumthor, Meili Peter, Gigon Guyer, Burkhalter & Sumi, Peter Märkli, and Valerio Olgiati, as well as artists such as Hans Josephsohn, Per Kirkby, and Meret Oppenheim among many others. His photography not only disseminated, but actively shaped, recent Swiss architecture discourse and its interfaces with art.