this period is gleaned from his few letters home to his wife Jolita, and from the photographs themselves. Recognition His frank, full-face photograph of a young woman with braided hair and decorative cicatrices on her cheeks and nose, taken in bright desert sunlight, is typical of his work in Northern Africa; made out of his curiosity about a timeless, unspoilt culture. It was selected by curator Edward Steichen for the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man, seen by 9 million visitors and published in a catalogue which has sold 4 million copies and has never been out of print. An Associated Press report of the time suggests that the picture may have been amongst those torn down in Moscow by the Nigerian student Theophilus Neokonkwo while The Family of Man was being exhibited there at its last venue in 1959. His actions were in a protest at colonialist attitudes to black races Death and legacy Shortly after returning from his last trip, Häberlin died in a tragic accident in Zürich in 1953, in the midst of his preparations for a new expedition to Mexico. His estate was bequeathed to the Fotostiftung Switzerland, Winterthur. Some of his photographs were published posthumously in 1956 in the book Yallah, completed by Häberlin’s father with the help of the American author Paul Bowles and with a foreword by Bowles who in 1933 also trekked through the Algerian Sahara to Tunisia. The New Yorker in a 1957 review reported that it was the work “of one of the great photographers of our times, capable of showing, as only art can, what would otherwise have remained hidden”, and other reviewers discern a poetic dimension to pictures that in other contexts would be documentary. Without the book, Häberlin would likely have remained unknown. Publications Exhibitions Peter W. Häberlin: Sahara. Fotografie 1949-1952, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome, February 2, 2017 – March 12, 2017 Vergessen & verkannt. Sieben Positionen aus der Sammlung ('Forgotten & misjudged: seven perspectives from the collection'), Wilhelm Felber, Martin Glaus, Peter W. Häberlin, Martin Imboden, Hugo Jaeggi, Gerda Meyerhof, Doris Quarella. Fotostiftung Schweiz Grüzenstr. 45, 8400 Winterthur, 3 June 3 – August 20, 2006. References 1912 births 1953 deaths Swiss photographers Photography in Algeria Society of Cameroon