Pedagogical Potential of Dolf Schnebli’s Photobook. Learning From a Slow Journey and Its Media

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the role of the photobook in architectural education and production through the case study of the publication One Year from Venice to India by the Land Route. 1956: Photosketches of a Slow Journey (2009). This engages with the formative travel overland from Venice to India (and back) undertaken in 1956 by the young Swiss architect Dolf Schnebli and his wife Clarissa Hall. The slow journey influenced the architect’s life, both in a general attitude as well as in his architectural practice. Among the different media used to collect memories from the journey – hand sketches, text, letters, photographs, objects – only black and white pictures shot by Dolf Schnebli’s Leica were included in the photobook. The architect referred to these images as photosketches, standing at the crossroads between a traditional hand-sketch and a photograph. In this essay the translation of the private memories collected in different sketchbooks into a published biographical photobook will be examined as a representation on the formative journey and as an educational tool itself.   Article received: April 12, 2022; Article accepted: June 21, 2022; Published online: September 15, 2022; Original scholarly paper