René Burri
"René Burri" by David Gleeson, Spring 2007, p. 88
Is René Burri the greatest living photographer? This retrospective unintentionally considered the possibility on the levels of both documentary and fine art. Famous for his heroically intimate portraiture—think of Che Guevara casually smoking a cigar in his Havana office in 1963, or Pablo Picasso holding court in Cannes in 1957 wearing his iconic striped T-shirt—Burri also created what is possibly the defining image of the 20th century in Men on a Rooftop, São Paulo, 1960. This spectacular photograph, shot with a telephoto lens from the top of a skyscraper, is a technical and compositional triumph. Its contrasts in light, coupled with the intimate view of four men walking across a roof at the right of the picture against the long shot of the teeming street on the left, captures the social, financial and vertigo-inducing architectural booms of a mid-century metropolis. The picture is three images in one. The mysterious silhouetted foursome, the traffic-choked boulevard and the unchecked high-rise building, hazy from the polluted streets below, together create a picture of modern urbanity that, while it could be any great city in the world, could only belong to the last fifty years.
Such compositional virtuosity, spontaneity and technical skill are apparent throughout Burri’s career and are attributable to his time as a student of the Bauhaus master Johannes Itten and the photographer Hans Finsler. But the first picture he took—at age 13—predates art school and shows Winston Churchill travelling in the back of an open limousine. Burri’s ability to capture the statuesque gravitas of the statesman using a borrowed camera showed an innate photographic skill even then.
As the archetypal roving “man with a camera,” Burri created images that define the major political and cultural events of the last half-century. His eye for the structures, geometries and architectural forms of photography has resulted in a comprehensive and unique body of work that reveals an idealistic vision. His extended photo essays on Cuba, China and Brasilia seek out modern utopias without losing sight of their darker side and, crucially, do not sensationalize: his stark images of wartime devastation speak eloquently of death without including corpses.
Considering the vast range of his work, this exhibition seemed curiously small. It was only on reflection, when reviewing all it contained, that its deceptive scope was apparent. Burri perfectly combines the roles of photographer, historical witness and documentary archivist, and still leaves an audience wanting more. The mark of a great photographer, surely?
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