Balthasar Burkhard – Wikipédia

Balthasar Burkhard , born the December 24, 1944 in Bern and died the April 16, 2010 in the same city, is a Swiss photographer who has received international recognition ^{[ first ]} For its monochromatic high-format photographic series.

Balthasar Burkhard learned from 1961 to 1964 in the photographer and director Kurt Blum. In 1965, in parallel with the opening of his photography studio, he began a documentary work in the context of the exhibitions of the Kunsthalle de Bern, then directed by Harald Szeemann. He hires him as a documentalist photographer. By this position, he comes into contact and develops his relationship to contemporary art, which encourages him to adopt an artistic approach.

It is exposed in different places during 1971 ^{[ 2 ]} , including the 7th Biennale des Jeunes de Paris. It was in 1972 that Balthasar Burkhard made his first trip to the United States with Jean-Christoph Emimanl .

In 1975, Burkhard went to live in the United States to become an actor. He settled in Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois as an external speaker until 1978. During this period Bukhard benefited for the first time from personal exhibition with Photocanvastes (1977), at the Zolla-Liebermann gallery in Chicago. He then resides in New York where his photographs were exhibited in 1981, at The Swiss Center Gallery. After these first brands of recognition, exhibitions follow one another in the 1980s, in different countries, a guarantee of some success at the international level.

Balthasar Burkhard addressed a wide variety of genres ^{[ 3 ]} : naked, portraits, landscapes (assembly, forest, desert), animals, architecture and town planning (among others work on the cities of Mexico City ^{[ 4 ]} the Chicago ^{[ 5 ]} ). He takes up these traditional subjects which he decontextualizes by the use of the close -up and fragmentation ^{[ 6 ]} (as we can notice for example in his naked photographs ^{[ 7 ] , [ 8 ]} ). Balthasar Burkhard likes the large format and black and white, used for many of his works. Choices that participate in the decontextualization and distance process, constituting the photographer’s approach. Thus, the direct relationship between the spectator and the photograph is apparently preferred, making the beautiful part in the exhibition rather than in the creation of works or portfolios. Through its large Burkhard formats creates images intended to be hung ^{[ 9 ]} .

In 1987, returning from a trip to Japan, he abandoned the large format which was until then his trademark and carried out more intimate photographs. His heliogravures, which he began to create during the 1990s, are characterized by the games of materials. This technique allows Balthasar Burkhard to deploy a wide range of tones within its images. In 2001, as part of a public order, he produced a grain helogravure for the chalcography of the Louvre entitled The Fiancé dress (Brautkleid) ^{[ ten ]} .