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• Men on rooftop, Sao Paulo, 1960 © René Burri/Magnum Photos
Magnum opus
This is the first full retrospective of Swiss-born photojournalist René Burri, its publication coinciding with a major exhibition in Paris. The show is curated by Hans-Michael Koetzle, who is also this book’s author. Of the 21 chapters most are selected geographically with three - Picasso, Le Corbusier and Contemporaries, Friends - focusing on personalities. The book documents a career that finds the photographer in South America, Europe, Africa and the Far, Near and Middle East, recording the key political figures and events of the mid and late twentieth century. Burri’s work is very much in the tradition of the Magnum Photos agency of which he is a member. Born in 1933, he has been shooting reportage for over 50 years and became an associate member of Magnum in 1956 and a full member in 1959. In the same year he published a photo essay on the Argentine Gaucho in Du: the accompanying text set out a fair definition of his motivations then and now: ‘The enormous social changes taking place in our age of technology - reflected in music, painting, literature and architecture - are casting a new face for humanity. Tracing these developments and conveying my thoughts and images of them, is what I consider to be my job’. 1963, in particular, was an eventful year for Burri: he travelled to Cuba met Castro and photographed Che Guevara, photographed JFK’s funeral, and married Rosellina Mandel, the widow of fellow photojournalist Werner Bischof. He was subsequently to collaborate with Bischof’s son Marco on a book concept to accompany a touring exhibition of Werner’s life work in 1990.
René Burri Photographs, Hans-Michael Koetzle, published by Phaidon, £59.95, ISBN 0 7148 4315 6.
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