Born 1914, Basel, Switzerland
Died 1999

The Swiss-born Burckhardt discovered photography as a medical student in London. Abandoning medicine in the 1930s, he traveled to Paris (1934), New York (1935), and Haiti (1938–39), making photographs, often of city streets, and experimenting with short 16mm films. From 1941 to 1944, while stationed in Trinidad in the Army Signal Corps, he filmed the island's residents. In 1947 he joined the Photo League, where he participated in a joint exhibition with Morris Huberland (1948) and was in the group show "This Is the Photo League" (1948–49). Although based in New York, Burckhardt continued to travel and work in Europe, South America, and Asia until shortly before his death. Perhaps best known for a portrait series of artists in their studio, made for Art News magazine (1950–64), he also collaborated with painters and sculptors, including Red Grooms and Yvonne Jacquette, to whom he was married for forty years, and taught filmmaking and painting at the University of Pennsylvania from 1967 to 1975.