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Rudy Burckhardt was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1914. While going to medical school in London, he discovered photography. He came to live in New York in 1935. “I really became a New Yorker rather than an American,” he later wrote. “There are so many mixtures of people. There’s no other place like this. Anybody can become a New Yorker, really. But you can’t say the same of Paris or Rome, you never become a Frenchman or an Italian.” Rudy did bring his European sensibilities with him, all of that history up to the present Surrealists, Dadaists and Cubists who’d been churning up the early 20th Century with newer realities. Rudy saw what most folks didn’t see, or took for granted when they looked, the first pop artist who made clear to everyone the beauty of the obvious everyday truth.
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Circles, New York, 1934
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Untitled, New York, 1937
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Encroachment, New York, 1938
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An’ I’ve Got a Nickel, 1938
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Willem de Kooning, 22nd Street, New York, 1938
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34th and Broadway, 1939
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Hot Roast Beef Sandwich 25 cents, 1939
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Lifebuoy, New York, 1939
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Sun, New York, 1939
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Midtown, New York, 1939
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Saks, New York, 1939
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Untitled, Paris, 1934
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Rudy Burckhardt was published in 2004 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Philip Lopate and Vincent Katz are the authors. The book includes the photographs of Rudy Burckhardt from the 1930s to the 1990s. The photos above are taken from this book.
love his work so much. i knew him in nyc.