Rudy Burckhardt (

né The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Rudolph August Burckhardt; April 6, 1914 – August 1, 1999) was a Swiss-American filmmaker, and photographer, known for his photographs of the hand-painted billboards that began to dominate the American landscape in the 1940s and 1950s. He was married to Edith Schloss and Yvonne Jacquette. His youngest son is artist Tom Burckhardt.

Life

Burckhardt was a member of the Swiss patrician Burckhardt family. He discovered photography as a medical student in London. He left medicine to pursue photography in the 1930s. He immigrated to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in 1935. Between 1934 and 1939, he traveled to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

, and

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

making photographs mostly of city streets and experimenting with short 16mm films. While stationed in

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger, more populous island of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the country. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is the southernmost island in ...

in the

Signal Corps A signal corps is a military branch, responsible for military communications (''signals''). Many countries maintain a signal corps, which is typically subordinate to a country's army. Military communication usually consists of radio, telephone, ...

from 1941–1944, he filmed the island's residents. In 1947, he joined the

Photo League The Photo League was a cooperative of photographers in New York City, New York who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes. Founded in 1936, the League included some of the most noted American photographers of the mid-20 ...

in New York City. Burckhardt married painter Yvonne Jacquette (1934-2023) whom he collaborated with throughout their 40-year marriage. During the mid-Fifties he worked with

Joseph Cornell Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) was an American visual artist and filmmaker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmma ...

on "The Aviary", "Nymphlight", "A Fable For Fountains", and "What Mozart Saw On Mulberry Street". He taught filmmaking and painting at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

from 1967 to 1975. He was the great-uncle of author Andreas Burckhardt. Burckhardt killed himself in 1999.

Exhibitions (selection)

*October 25, 2014 – February 15, 2015 "Rudy Burckhardt – In the Jungle of the Big City" at *November 4, 2011 – March 25, 2012 "The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936–1951" at

Jewish Museum (New York) The Jewish Museum is an art museum housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the Felix M. Warburg House, along the Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The museum holds a collection of approximately 30,000 objects, including ...

*September 23, 2008 – January 4, 2009 "New York, N. Why? Photographs by Rudy Burckhardt, 1937–1940" at

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

*February 1, 2008 – May 14, 2008 "Street Dance: The New York Photographs of Rudy Burckhardt" at

Museum of the City of New York The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is a history and art museum in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was founded by Henry Collins Brown, in 1923Beard, Rick. "Museum of the City of New York" in to preserve and present the history ...

*May 9 – July 15, 2000 "Rudy Burckhardt and Friends: New York Artists of the 1950s and '60s" at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

References

External links

"The Cinema of Looking"
interview with Burckhardt at ''Jacket 21''
Film catalog
at

The Film-Makers' Cooperative The Film-Makers' Cooperative (a.k.a. The New American Cinema Group, Inc.) is an artist-run, non-profit organization founded in 1961 in New York City by Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage, Jack Smith (film director), Jack Smit ...

* In German. * Audio recording of Rudy Burckhardt Lecture, 1992, from Maryland Institute College of Art's Decker Library,

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

Copyright permissions for Rudy Burckhardt
from the WATCH File {{DEFAULTSORT:Burckhardt, Rudy 1914 births 1999 deaths 1999 suicides Filmmakers from Maine Swiss emigrants to the United States 20th-century American photographers People from Basel-Stadt People from Searsmont, Maine Rudy Suicides by drowning in the United States Suicides in Maine