Vera Isler

Vera Isler-Leiner, (1931-2015) was sent to Switzerland in 1936 with her two sisters to escape the Nazi terror. Her parents were murdered in 1942 in Bełżec, a Polish extermination camp. Having spent her childhood in a orphanage, she later worked as a medical-technical laboratory assistant. Her true passion, however, was making art - tapestries, collages, prints and sculptures. 

During a six-months visit to the US in the early 1980s, Isler switched her creative focus to photography. Fearless and adventurous, she searched for good motives and stories in the streets and alleys of New York. The lives of people of all ethnicities and classes fascinated her as much as this newly discovered art form - Graffiti – which she encountered all over Lower Manhattan. “Shadowmen”, the mysterious ghostly figures which appeared overnight, became her favorite subjects. She had the exceptional fortune – likely through an introduction by her friend Keith Haring – to visit and photograph the artist, Richard Hambleton. She followed him to Venice in 1984 and photographed his spooky figures which he painted on a short stop-over in Basel. Her extensive collection of “Shadowman” photographs pays tribute to this. 

Isler published her stories in countless newspapers and magazines, such as "Das Magazin", "NZZ", "Du", "Spiegel", "Stern", “ART” and "Weltwoche". International recognition in the 1990s with portrait photography. In  "Rollenwechsel" (1992) and "Face to Face" (1994), she created black and white large-format portraits of famous artists and photographers, showing them in their apartments or studios. In 2000 Vera Isler published “Auch ich”, an autobiography which situates her often tragic experiences within the chronicles of her battle against breast cancer.

www.veraisler.com