Photographs capture moments. A glimpse is extracted from the flow of time and preserved. Temporality attaches to the photograph, however. Viewers instinctively seek to participate in the moment depicted; they reconstruct a before and an after, a narrative without a context. In a certain way their imagination re-starts the flow of time frozen in the image. Balthasar Burkhard’s photos are different. His use of black and white is the only structural device of his images. Motifs, objects and scenes emerge from the darkness, as if the photographer had placed them in front of a neutral backdrop. Burkhard manages to “compose” still lifes without staging them. Our focus is wholly absorbed by the motifs, which seem to appear naturally, without forcing themselves on the viewer. Even a complex sprawl such as the rainforest on the Rio Negro, its complexity doubled by its reflection in the river, appears like a careful composition that directs our gaze. Burkhard’s photographs do not capture a moment, referring to a time before and after; this is a photography of the timeless image.