Description
Photographer Balthasar Burkhard was born in Berne, and his name is associated with dune landscapes and cityscapes stretching to the horizon and far beyond, monumental parts of the body and precision black-and-white large-format prints on baryt paper. Burkhard firmly established himself in the Swiss art scene in the 1980s, notably with his depictions of the human body and tightly framed body fragments. When this scene was undergoing an unprecedented boom two decades earlier, with Berne at the heart of it all, Balthasar Burkhard was right in the middle of it all with his camera. From 1962 to 1964 he studied photography under Kurt Blum, who instilled in him his high standards of quality and his keen eye for nuanced gradations of gray.
One constant that is present across Burkhard's entire oeuvre is his characteristic typification. He portrays a leg, an ear, a wing, a city, an underground spring, a mountain – all detached from their origin, divorced from any spatial and temporal context.
Burkhard searched for structures that are not visible at first glance, structures that he found both in natural landscapes and in cityscapes. His massive grayscale accentuates the pattern, the pervasiveness of structure, so that motifs are transformed into prototypes.
Balthasar Burkhard's images are static, quiet, timeless and – in the way they freeze-frame the world – almost genuinely photographic.
The artist died in Berne at the age of 65.Details
- Location:
- UBS Zurich, Paradeplatz
- Dimensions:
- 115 x 142 cm
- Medium:
- Photography