Born in 1936 in Solothurn, Switzerland. Died in 2018 in Burg im Leimental, Switzerland.
Hugo Jaeggi completed his apprenticeship as a photographer with Ernst Räss in Solothurn from 1953 to 1956. He then went to Vevey to study at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers with Gertrude Fehr and Yvan Dalain. From 1961 on he worked as a freelance photographer in Basel, where he also ran a photo shop until 1974. Parallel to commercial commissioned photography, Jaeggi always pursued his own photographic fine art projects, which he has shown in numerous exhibitions since the 1980s. Until 2016, he also taught at a Rudolf Steiner-Schule in the Basel area. His earlier works give insight into the everyday life of factory and farm workers in Switzerland from the 1950s and 1960s. Later, various reportage assignments took him to different parts of the world, from Belarus to Indonesia to South America. Within the framework of long-term portrait studies, he accompanied people with his camera over decades. His photographs testify to a high sensitivity for the right moment and at the same time bear an expressive and experimental artistic signature. Jaeggi has received numerous awards for his photography, most recently the Kunst- und Kulturpreis of the Canton of Solothurn in 1998.
Hugo Jaeggi’s works are represented in national collections including the Fotostfitung Schweiz; Photoforum PasquArt, Biel, Switzerland; Kunstsammlung Stadt Biel, Switzerland; Kunstsammlung Kanton Solothurn, Switzerland;; Musée d’art et d’histoire, Fribourg, Switzerland; Bundeskunstsammlung, Bern, Switzerland.
