My father is the boss

“My father is the boss.“ These are the opening words of a short elementary school composition from the year 1974. The writing is plain, control of the pen is still not quite reliable. The topic given to the students by the teacher was: “My Father.“ Christoph Burtscher is eight years old. “My father is the boss.“ That he knows. And he also knows: “He sells curtains. Not all of them are pretty. He has a lot of helpers. Uncle Erwin and Uncle Werner work for him. My father has so many keys he doesn’t know what they’re for anymore. And he also sells diapers.“ This short text from the 70’s leads us right into Christoph Burtscher’s book of photographs, which uses the text’s opening words for its title. It also provides some of the protagonists of the work and it offers perspective: a child begins to appropriate the world, using writing, but even more by means of photography. There are numerous connections between the school compositions, in which the boy describes and examines his immediate surroundings, and the photographs that arise at the same time. In the present book Christoph Burtscher has united the two media.