Born in Geneva in 1944, Cyril Kobler was first trained in Graphic Design and Photography at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD), and opened his photographic studio in 1969. In addition to his award-winning commercial work, Kobler has also produced a diverse photographic oeuvre that ranges from ethnographic portraits to reimagined modern-day metropolises. Kobler first began to explore the city as subject with his Imaginary Cities series of 1993, before training his sights on actual megacities from around the globe. During a two-month residency in Shanghai in 2004, Kobler photographed the steel and concrete architecture of the city's skyscrapers as it metastasized right before his eyes. Impressed with Shanghai's rapid pace of transformation, Kobler later digitally enhanced and altered these images in his studio, playing with the perceived artificiality of urban spaces. The resultant Shanghai Recomposé (Shanghai Recomposed) series offers a meditation on the accelerated socio-economic growth in China by blurring visions of a fluid present with an ever-evolving future.

Kobler has been awarded several prestigious honors by the Federal Department of Culture for his posters (1982–1984), the Swiss National Bank in a competition to design new banknotes (1987), and First Prize in the L'eau pour l'humanite poster contest (2000). In 2006, he opened "lagalerie" space for photography, which as of 2012 reopened as Espace Cyril Kobler, Geneva. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Musée Sainte-Croix; Musée Rath; Galerie Anton Meier, Geneva; Galerie Focale, Nyon; Magda Danysz Gallery, Paris; Galerie Alexandre Mottier, Geneva; and the 2014 Biennale Internationale de l'Image, Nancy. Kobler currently lives and works in Geneva.

CEJ