Flo Peters Gallery presents Photography of The Legendary René Burri

Written by Christopher Underwood Monday, 02 November 2009 21:08

HAMBURG, GERMANY - As of November 3rd, Flo Peters Gallery will present René Burri, one of the last remaining great photography legends of the 20th century. The show gives a comprehensive insight into the work of the Swiss photographer and takes the observer onto a journey through the 20th century: From Swiss rural life to roman dolce Vita as well as Argentinean Gauchos and impressions of Maoist China René Burri did nothing less than photo imposing pure History onto paper. With portraits of for example Le Corbusier, Alberto Giacometti or Che Guevara, René Burri eternalized some of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Burri's images stand out for their mystical and mythical, within the narrow confines of figurative realism.

René Burri was born in April 1933 in Zurich and studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts from the age of 16. In 1950 he already had progressed to the master class of Photographer Hans Finsler, himself a representative of the so called Straight Photography, who greatly influenced René Burri´s creative eye. In the first two years after his exams he not only concentrated on photography but also on film. Amongst others he worked as a cameraman for the Walt Disney Film Production in Switzerland and also shared a studio with Walter Binder.

His first essay of Photographs was published in 1955 in the magazine Science & Vie. On initiative of the renowned Photography agency Magnum the same series was also published in Müncher Illustrierte and LIFE-Magazine. After a second manifold published photo essay about Le Corbusier´s spectacular Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp many ground- breaking photo-trips around the world should follow. These were to pave the way for first membership in 1956 and full membership in 1959 at Magnum.

The exhibition René Burri – Retrospective. Five Decades of a Great Photographer at Flo Peters Gallery shows photographs from over five decades of René Burri’s work. World famous documentary photographs from South Korea, Vietnam or Brazil as well as pictures of friends and colleagues such as Yves Klein, Ingrid Bergman, Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Frank will not be missed. Furthermore the exhibition will show works from one of his most exciting and famous essay Die Deutschen (The Germans) in which he brilliantly documented post-war everyday life in West- and Eastern Germany.

Known the world over, especially for his iconic images of Che Guevara, Swiss-born René Burri (b.1933) is one of the world's greatest living photographers. Now, for the first time ever and featuring countless previously unpublished images, Burri's remarkable and adventurous work is brought together in this career retrospective of over 400 duotone photographs.

Edited and compiled by the distinguished writer Hans-Michael Koetzle, in close collaboration with Burri, this unprecedented retrospective is a historic book of the major political events and key personalities of the twentieth century - as seen through the eyes of one photographer.

Nothing like this book on Burri has ever been published before, and it is a real coup for Phaidon to be the first to publish his entire career's work.

A member of the prestigious Magnum photo agency, Burri is a photographer whose curiosity and humanity as a photographer have afforded him almost unrestricted access to the major events and personalities of the last 50 years. In this way, René Burri Photographs is a fascinating personal account of the major artists, politicians and personalities that Burri has made a part of his life. First achieving international recognition with the seminal photography book on post-World War II Germany Die Deutschen in 1962, Burri has since become one of the most important figures in the history of photography: he is universally revered by his peers for his sympathetic eye and his capacity to capture larger-than-life personalities on film.

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