Gallery, Editions & Fine Art Printing
The image as a tangible object: Zurich-based excellence in black-and-white.
blackprint was founded in Zurich in 2016 by Patricia Bühler and Anthony Chrétien — two artists whose backgrounds have little to do with conventional photography, and everything to do with how blackprint works. Patricia comes from music and composition; Anthony from applied arts, design, and exhibition scenography. Between them, they have built a studio, a gallery, and an editorial programme that treats the photographic image not as a file to be reproduced, but as a physical object to be constructed.
The Artists behind blackprint
Patricia Bühler directs the curatorial and editorial programme. Born in Mexico City, trained in modern music and composition in Paris and Zurich. She approaches each exhibition and edition as a compositional problem — how elements relate to each other, what they say together that they cannot say alone. Her background in music informs a practice in which rhythm, silence, and sequence matter as much as the individual work.
Anthony Chrétien is responsible for the technical and material practice. Born in Paris, trained in Applied Arts in France, worked in design and exhibition scenography across Europe. He approaches printing as physical construction — the choice of paper, the calibration of tonal register, the decision to laminate or to leave a sheet in an open frame are, for him, as much artistic judgments as technical ones. His work with the Piezography® Pro carbon pigment system is described by the press as a form of black magic.
Material Craft & Editorial Vision
For blackprint, a photograph is never a neutral file. Printing is a process of material decisions — each one shaping what the image ultimately becomes. The studio works with a continuously evolving selection of papers — from Japanese Washi to Himalayan papers — chosen for both their archival quality and their physical character. The relationship between substrate and photograph is the starting point of every project.
For certain works, this logic extends beyond paper. Through a laminated glass process, selected prints are transformed into self-sufficient objects — the image thermally bonded between two panes of mineral glass, with UV protection integrated directly into the structure. At 4mm total thickness, these works require no additional framing: they are complete objects, where image, material, and light interact directly.
The blackprint edition
A Contemporary Anachronism
Central to blackprint’s identity is blackprint edition, an editorial programme originating from the founders’ private archive of antique glass plate photographs. The logic is straightforward: a plate from 1880 is printed at a scale, on a paper, and with a tonal depth that its era could not have produced. The historical image acquires a presence it never had — not nostalgic, not archival, but firmly situated in the present.
Since 2018, this programme has expanded to include collaborations with contemporary photographers and artists. Each edition is conceived jointly from the outset — image selection, paper, format, finishing, and presentation developed in close collaboration with the artist, and with graphic designer Jacques Borel.