Photographer, filmmaker, painter, collagiste, poet, writer Rudy Burkhardt, died this past August at his summer home in Maine (bidding adieu to his loved ones and walking into the adjacent lake he affectionately called "our pond"). He was 85 years old. "A jack of all trades and master of several," as John Ashbery once put it, a quintessential artists' artist, Burkhardt had, for over three generations, (since his arrival in New York, in 1935, from his native Switzerland), been a key presence, famously diffident, famously under-appreciated, quietly and unostentatiously, for over half a century, avoiding the glitz (and the fame of his contemporaries), doggedly getting on with the work. His achievements ranged far and wide, over an extraordinary span of years. Through his lifetime friendship with poet and da'hce critic Edwin Denby (1898-1983) he became intimately involved (both as observer and participant) at the very beginnings of a nascent post-war New York avant-garde.

If the art world had a conscience, it was he-poet and patient witness-of the day-to-day, of the quotidian, laureate of unpretentiousness. His humility and old- fashioned gentleness were significant and defining features.

His was something rare-a friendly art. His collaborations with poets were legion; among them, film collaborations with John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, David Shapiro, and books with Edwin Denby, Vincent Katz, Simon Pettet.

Belatedly-in February 1987, he was feted with three simultaneous New York exhibitions-a show of photos (at Brooke Alexander), a show of paintings (at the Blue Mountain Gallery), and a film retrospective (featuring over 60 of his short films) at the Museum of Modern Art. Ten years later, in 1997, he was the subject of a full-scale retrospective (held at the Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, in Valencia, Spain, and organized by poet Vincent Katz).

His images of New York City-the work that he is, perhaps, currently best known for are among the most fundamental and enduring taken this century. His position in the pantheon (as if he aspired to such immortality!) seems assured.