To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour (William Blake)

Transcendent, primordial, passionate: these are not words that we ordinarily associate with cattle. Yet Burt Pritzker’s photographic image making elevates his humble subject matter to a metaphysical level, conveying its most essential characteristics. His elegant, formalist compositions explore themes much loftier than their points of departure, and photography, the most transmutable of artistic processes, is the ideal medium for Pritzker’s investigations. We can easily mistake his micro-views of bovine backs, horns, and eyes for landscapes, night skies, and moonscapes. At the same time, they reveal the “cattleness” of their subjects – the amazing contrast of delicacy and brute power, the softness of ear and mouth; the wrinkled skin, massive muscles and stolid character that add up to something more.

Pritzker began the Texas Rangeland series during a drive near Big Bend in 1995, when he stopped to photograph a Brahma bull that he spotted standing in a pasture near the road. He found his own choice of subject matter startling; he had never before considered cattle as a fit motif. His previous work portrayed human figures, plants, and geologic and architectural structures.

Pritzker’s work is informed not only by his own profound, direct experiences with his subjects, but also by artworks he has seen during his travels, including eighteenth century Japanese calligraphy paintings and the rock gardens at the Ryoanji Monastery in Kyoto, Japan. Like these Buddhist-inspired masterworks, Pritzker’s photographs possess the qualities of simplicity, quietude and reconditeness. As Pritzker explains,

“At the core of my photography lies the belief that ‘Everything is also something else.’ When I look at anything through a camera, I sense another world, another reality beyond what I see. If the photograph I take is successful, that ‘other world’ comes into being almost by magic, a kind of alchemy. My aim is not to record something, it is to reveal something else.”

Teresa Hayes Ebie
Curator