George Gerster (b. 30 April 1928) is a journalist and a pioneer aerial photographer. Born in Winterthur, in 1950 Gerster earned a doctorate at the University of Zurich in Germanistik. Through 1956 he worked as an editor for the inhabitants of Zurich's "World Week". Since then he has been active as a freelance journalist with an emphasis on science reporting and flight photography. In this photographic field of activity he did substantial pioneer work in the 1950s and 1960s, respected not only for the technology and quality of his flight pictures, but above all for the universality and internationality of the topics. Gerster's early photographic reportage and picture volumes detailed landscapes of North Africa. In the sixties he documented places of archaeological interest in over 100 countries on all continents. In addition, he took breath-taking pictures of mountains and deserts, coasts and lakes, agrarian and industrial landscapes. George Gerster was honored in 1976 with the Prix Nadar. His photos have been shown in single and group exhibitions in Europe, Japan and the USA. Gerster emphasizes, on the one hand, the beauty of the landscape; on the other hand he points out the endangerment to nature caused by excessive use, erosion, technology and mechanization. The fact that he does not only want to make "beautiful pictures" shows in his expert and precisely investigated captions and book texts.
Publications
- Der Mensche auf seiner Erde
- Flights of discovery: The Earth from Above (1978)
- The Past from Above: Aerial Photographs of Archaeological Sites (2005) (Review)
