Balthasar Burkhard

Swiss photographer Balthasar Burkhard (born 1944) makes large-format pictures that bring out the general contours of a repertoire of subjects--primarily bodies and landscapes (both urban and rural)--which are presented in dramatically stark black-and-white contrast to create an effect of extreme formal reduction and breathtaking scale. In his well-known portraits of the Alps, for example, he elicits both delicate detail and epic monumentality from the mountainscape, projecting an atmosphere of forceful silence and enlarging the drama with painterly effects. For the viewer, Burkhard's images provoke a thrilling vertigo, as the eye roams to locate an anchor amid such vast scale. This beautiful two-volume set premiers Burkhard's new full-color work alongside the older black-and-white portrait and landscape photographs for which the artist is so well known. These recent color pictures of blossoms and plants convey an impressive sensual intensity, so palpable we can almost smell their scents.