Loosely translated as “Scenes from the Lives of Racing Cyclists”, this remarkable portfolio is the earliest artist's book in the collection and the only example dating from the 1940s. Conceived at the peak of the Second World War, it anticipates by more than two decades many of the conceptual strategies, aesthetic concerns, and modes of appropriation that would later become associated with the postmodern artist’s book.

Although it makes no political statement, the work explores the drama of competition. Through twenty-nine photographic press clippings of Tour de France cyclists, meticulously collected by Manuel Gasser over the course of a decade and arranged in a striking graphic sequence by Hans Falk, the portfolio captures the poetry and the brutality of professional cycling. Newspaper fragments are transformed into a cohesive visual narrative through an elegant gravure presentation and a masterful sense of rhythm and composition.

Manuel Gasser (1909–1979), who grew up in Lucerne, was one of the most influential Swiss journalists and cultural figures of his generation. Between 1929 and 1930, he worked in Arles for the Bern newspaper Der Bund, reporting on the newly established Camargue nature reserve. He later served as the Paris cultural correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (1930–1933) before becoming a founding editor of both Annabelle and Die Weltwoche. He contributed to Die Weltwoche from 1933 to 1946 and again between 1951 and 1957, while also serving as a correspondent in Berlin (1946–1949) and London (1949–1951). In 1958, he became editor-in-chief of the influential cultural magazine Du, a position he held until 1974.

Hans Falk (1918–2002), a Zurich-based graphic designer and painter, was one of Switzerland’s leading poster artists. A committed leftist and an outstanding typographer, Falk brought a sophisticated mise-en-scène to the portfolio’s design. The collaboration between Gasser and Falk resulted in a work of extraordinary originality, issued in an edition of only one hundred copies.

The historical significance of Szenen aus dem Leben der Rennfahrer has been recognized by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, who devote a full discussion to the work in The Photobook: A History, Volume III (Phaidon, p. 284). They describe it as:

“An astonishing production [...] The book’s interest lies not just in the fact that it was done at all, but in its conception and execution. It is a superb demonstration of the art of combining the ephemeral and the throwaway – newspaper cuttings of cycling photographs from France and Switzerland, collected over ten years before the war – with a jewel of a setting.”

More than an exceptional photobook, Szenen aus dem Leben der Rennfahrer stands as an aesthetically prophetic work. Gasser’s iconographic research and the appropriation of media imagery, as well as Falk’s visual structure and graphic sequencing, prefigure postmodern artistic practices that would only become recognised decades later.