Omnia

What otherwise no one sees. Balthasar Burkhard. Swiss photographer Balthasar Burkhard's oeuvre continues the tradition of his compatriots Robert Frank and Jakob Tuggener, their ever-questioning search for the truth hidden in the surfaces of the world and their contemplative precision. This monograph provides the first comprehensive overview of his work from the 1970s to 2004. Burkhards black-and-white photographs are characterized by rich details, perfect focus, and a mastery of craft that translates technical perfection in conceptual precision. Burkhard transforms the objective reality of his motifs into autonomous visual worlds with an immediacy and tender-sharp sensuality of their own. He carefully chooses detail and large-scale views of the visible world that are capable of asserting their presence in the most intimate realms of the viewer's mind. "Burkhard very intensely focuses on the same topics for a long time. He often simultaneously works on nudes, landscapes, still lives, portraits, and animals. It is rather common for the artist to return to an idea after years or decades as if he had been thinking about it just yesterday." Matthias Frehner