His parents gave him his first camera on his fourteenth birthday, and it was at this age that he took his first photographs. He was already passionate about photography, but it was his travels that gave him a taste for reportage. After graduating from the Fribourg School of Photography in 1955, he travelled throughout Europe, including the Camargue. In 1960, he published a report on the Camargue, with captions by Jean Giono, which was an immediate success.
From the 1980s onwards, Hans Silvester turned his attention to environmental activism. He photographed all of Europe's nature parks, denounced the ravages of deforestation in Amazonia, published a long report on the Calavon River under the title “La rivière assassinée” (“The Murdered River”), and took an interest in forest exploitation in North America.
Hans Silvester is a photographer who is still active today. In 2006, he photographed the lives of desert women and the peoples of the Omo Valley. In 2015, Hans Silvester published a book entitled Pastorale africaine, with a preface by Pierre Rabhi, and reissued his book on pétanque.