we welcome: Stephan Bösch

some really timeless photos… welcome!

Absolutely delicious photographs; some stopped me and dropped my jaw they engaged me so.

I think your strength is to aesthet-icise (a made up word I suppose) simple things to such and extent they are enchanted, some of the shots (especially 6 & 8) really let this moody effort stay intact as some of the shots are too instructive in nature verses moving.

I can’t wait to see more photographs from you.

hi stephan, nice to see you here again :)

Hello Stephan!
I enjoyed your Alp Loch series very much.
The cover image is mesmerizing and #10 simply stunning!

Welcome Stephan!

welcome! beautiful, “tender” work!

Good morning everybody

Thank you very much for your welcome.

Eva. Ok. You mean the quality? I know…. I will show you some prints in Winterthur. Why are you puzzled about the sequencing? Well. The first one can stand alone without the other pictures. But the rest show the daily routine. First collect the animals an bring them in the byre(?) to milk them. After a first coffee she began to make cheese. Then she had breakfest. Part of the daily work is also to care the cheeses. In the evening she brought the cows back to the byre to milk them a second time. When there is no acute thunderstorm the cows are abroad the hole night.

Thank you Joe. Your opinion is very interesting.
It is very difficult to make not cliché photographs. All the activities are hard work. But most of the people don’t know this life anymore. For me this world is nothing special because the valley down of this alp is my homeland. But I’m sure that most of Swiss people don’t knok a lot of this very hard work. They don’t know from the handcraft when they eat cheese.

Have a nice day.

Stephan

Welcome Stephan, wonderful series

This summer I made holidays in a small swiss valley.

The cows are at the alp because there is not enough grass in the valley for summer and winter. It is already very exhausting for the farmers to fetch the grass in the valleys during summer. It is impossible for the farmers to fetch the grass at the alp.

The best meadows at the valley are mown 3 times during summer.
The gras of the valley is collected and stored entirely for the winter.
They even fetched the grass of their gardens in front of their homes.
The gras gets dried and mainly stored in big wodden houses.

The cows are extremely well mountaineer.
So they can fetch the grass at the alp during summer themselves.

The quality of the meadows is equal at the alp and at the valley.
At the meadows I saw even thyme growing at 1500 metrs.
What you get is medicine, not milk.

The alp I visited had 150 cows. Not that romantic like at above series.
These cows produce at the beginning 2500 litres milk, at the end of the summer 800.
The milk is being sent to the valley via a small pipeline, 2cm diameter.
At the valley they produced the cheese or did nothing, just sold the milk directly to the cooperations.

The cows at the alp are always outside. Also at night.
Every day at 4 in the morning and 6 at the evening the cows are collected and get milked at the alp.

btw. a farmer there gets 0.5 chf for one litre, at the shop it costs 1.70 chf (hodgepodge no taste milk).
I dont know what “bio milk” is but they sold the best milk I ever tasted “not bio”, just as plain milk.

We drank every day 3 litres milk !

Im will post some pics in the forum later this year.