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Brigitte B Burckhardt
BIOGRAPHY
Brigitte currently lives in Switzerland. She is a self-taught photographer, started shooting as a child inspired by her grandfather whose name she chose to bear as her artist’s name to honour him.
She shot with a film camera for years be it color or black and white, spent hours developing her films in a dark room. In her twenties she travelled around the globe taking her camera along and thus gained great experience especially in landscape and street life photography.
Being reasonable instead of listening to her passion she studied medicine and is still partly working as a medic. Though after a life changing event she had more time for herself and the passion for photography came back stronger than ever. Still taken mostly by landscape and street life photography but also starting to experiment with other approaches.
THE INTERVIEW
What best practices would you advise for those refining their photography skills independently?
I think what comes first is the passion, the drive to create. Then everybody has to find the best path for him or her. It so happened that I didn’t go to a photography school, although deep inside I would have loved to. I can’t really give advice, more like share some ideas to pick from and tell you how I did it. Practice as often as possible, but respect your rhythm. For instance, I always have a camera with me - one never knows! I shoot sometimes daily. I let myself get inspired by my environment, by my drive, by my moods. I learn by trying, as is the case with abstract photography at the moment.
I have also been inspired by people like my grandfather as a child, and later by photographers such as Robert Frank, Werner Bischof, and more recently Phil Penman for street photography. I used to go to exhibitions at the ICP in New York, the Photo Elysée Museum in Lausanne, and today I attend the Vevey Biennale. I am not sure, though, to what extent this has made me grow as a photographer. I just went to see the exhibitions I was interested in and was a viewer; I never analysed others’ work. Unconsciously, though, it must have moved me and stayed with me. But after all, I think I am a very instinctive photographer. A step I took this year was attending photo workshops. I learned from this experience, but also realised how different everybody’s practice is. The most important thing, I would say, is to enjoy what you do and never give up, even in hard times. If it’s your passion, you won’t.
How did you come to develop a passion for photographing landscapes and street scenes?
As a youngster, I used to take photographs of my friends and of my trips. Travelling was everything to me. So while away, people replaced my friends. I was curious about everything, most of all about life itself. In my twenties, on a long trip through Asia, I was fascinated by the way of life in the different countries I went to. I was shooting analog then and brought home a suitcase of slides. Landscapes, people, and cities were my subjects. Often it led to interaction with the people I photographed. It was fun, and I learnt a lot. Back home, it was more complicated to take street shots; people weren’t as forthcoming as elsewhere. Today, I take lots of landscape photographs while I am in Switzerland and think street when I travel, recently mostly to the UK. What I love above all is shooting life, be it in nature or in urban environments.
Would you say that spontaneity has become a more meaningful element of your photographic approach?
Yes, absolutely. Sometimes I know where I am going, for instance to my sunset spots at home. I just sit there and hang out. But often in summer youngsters come to play in the waters; most of the time they are ok if I take some photographs. I am open to shoot what is there at the moment. I like surprises. In cities I just wander, of course. Like in London, I know some places of interest to me, like neighbourhoods with lots of street art, markets, places where youngsters hang out, multicultural places, and more. I just love capturing life around me spontaneously.
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