Impossible Reminiscences


Book Description

This title presents the largely unpublished colour photographs of one the world's greatest living humanist photographers, accompanied by Burri's personal recollections and reminiscences to illuminate each photograph.




Brasilia


Book Description

Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of Brazil's capital Brasilia. Designed by architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, it has since become one of the most famous and widely studied urban planning projects. Niemeyer's cathedral, Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida; his building for the national parliament, the Congresso Nacional; and the city's 707-foot television tower have become icons of twentieth-century architecture. The entire city, marked by its cross-shaped layout and vast open spaces, was named a UNESO World Heritage site in 1987. René Burri, an internationally celebrated Swiss-born photographer and member of the legendary Magnum agency, visited the city for the first time on a long journey around South America in 1958, when most of Brasilia was a vast building site. He returned many times over more than thirty years, documenting the growth and development of this urban utopia. Besides documenting the buildings in various stages of completion, Burri took portraits of Niemeyer and his workers and photographed Brasilia's street scenes and people: workers with their tools, machinery and building materials, pedestrians on the newly finished streets and squares, and aerial views from the air of the city's first slums abutting brand-new blocks of residential buildings. His images capture the strong sense of a new era and a vibrant atmosphere of hard work and strain; they reflect the huge dimensions of the landscape and the great scale of this project and its ambition to design and build a new capital--and fill it with life. Complete with an essay by eminent architect and scholar of architectural history Arthur Rüegg, René Burri. Brasilia marks the city's fiftieth anniversary and allows readers to look at an extraordinary city through the eyes of an exceptional photographer.




René Burri


Book Description

A member of the famous artist-owned photo agency Magnum Photos, Swiss photographer René Burri (1933-2014) found himself wherever history was happening during the late twentieth century. His countless travels took him across Europe and the Americas to the Middle East to Japan and China to document the twentieth century's major events. His extraordinary sense for people and their personalities resulted in remarkably candid portraits of celebrities, such as architects Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, and Luis Barragán; artists Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Tinguely; and Che Guevara, whose 1963 portrait with a cigar is one of the world's most famous and widely reproduced photographic portraits. Published to coincide with a major exhibition at Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, René Burri: Explosions of Sight draws from Burri's vast archive. With the museum, Burri staged both his first exhibition and his first major retrospective and maintained a close relationship throughout his life, entrusting it also with the conservation of his estate. The book brings together for the first time Burri's entire body of work, both photographic and nonphotographic, including previously unpublished archival documents, as well as book designs, exhibition projects, travel diaries, collages, watercolors, and objects Burri collected. In doing so, it offers a new and uniquely intimate view of one of the world's greatest photographers.




René Burri: Berlin


Book Description

During the Cold War, photographer René Burri's (born 1933) Swiss citizenship allowed him to work in both East and West Germany and therefore to portray the country as a whole. This catalogue features his black-and-white photos of everyday life in Berlin between 1957 and 1964.




Magnum Contact Sheets


Book Description

At their best, the pictures add to our understanding of the surface event documented and reveal something profound about the people pushing that history forward. — The Los Angeles Times Available for the first time in an accessible paperback edition, this groundbreaking book presents a remarkable selection of contact sheets and ancillary material, revealing how the most celebrated Magnum photographers capture and edit the very best shots. Addressing key questions of photographic practice, the book illuminates the creative methods, strategies, and editing processes behind some of the world’s most iconic images. Featured are 139 contact sheets from sixty- nine photographers, as well as zoom-in details, selected photographs, press cards, notebooks, and spreads from contemporary publications including Life magazine and Picture Post. Further insight into each contact sheet is provided by texts written by the photographers themselves or by experts chosen by the members’ estates. Many of the acknowledged greats of photography are featured, including Henri Cartier- Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, and Inge Morath, as well as such members of Magnum’s latest generation as Jonas Bendiksen, Alessandra Sanguinetti, and Alec Soth. The contact sheets cover over seventy years of history, from Robert Capa’s Normandy landings and the Paris riots of 1968 via Bruno Barbey, to images of Che Geuvara by René Burri, Malcolm X by Eve Arnold, and portraits of classic New Yorkers by Bruce Gilden.




Rene Burri Photographs


Book Description

The first career retrospective of Rene Burri, one of the world's greatest living photographers, is now available in paperback. Known the world over for his iconic images of Che Guevara and Brasília, Burri's remarkable and adventurous work is brought together in this career-spanning collection. More than a photography monograph, this is also a history book of the major political events and key personalities of the twentieth century seen through the eyes of one man. The photographs range through Europe to the Middle East, Vietnam, Cuba and beyond, and portray political and artistic figures like Che Guevara, Winston Churchill, Picasso and Le Corbusier. The culmination of several years of scholarly research by the distinguished writer Hans Michael Koetzle, this book reveals Burri's important contribution to reportage photography and forms a fascinating personal account of the history, politics and culture of the twentieth century.




Made in Germany


Book Description

The American photographer Leonard Freed travelled to Germany for the first time in 1954. Curious and yet from a safe distance, he observed the people in their social surroundings, at work, at street festivals, in public parks, in the streets and against the industrial backdrop of the Ruhr Valley. The Germany he saw was deeply cursed with the effects of war and the NS regime - despite the country's reconstruction, industrial development and economic success. Freed published his extensive report Made in Germany for the first time with Grossman Publishers in New York in 1970. The present reprint accompanies the same-named exhibition at Museum Folkwang in Essen and comes with a booklet providing extra information about Freed's approach and his times. The booklet also contains hitherto unpublished images, documents, and writing by Freed, spanning his fifty years of photographing Germany.




American Geography


Book Description

Award-winning photographer Matt Black traveled over 100,000 miles to chronicle the reality of today’s unseen and forgotten America. When Magnum photographer Matt Black began exploring his hometown in California’s rural Central Valley—dubbed “the other California,” where one-third of the population lives in poverty—he knew what his next project had to be. Black was inspired to create a vivid portrait of an unknown America, to photograph some of the poorest communities across the US. Traveling across forty-six states and Puerto Rico, Black visited designated “poverty areas,” places with a poverty rate above 20 percent, and found that poverty areas are so numerous that they’re never more than a two-hour’s drive apart, woven through the fabric of the country but cut off from “the land of opportunity.” American Geography is a visual record of this five-year, 100,000-mile road trip, which chronicles the vulnerable conditions faced by America’s poor. This compelling compilation of black-and-white photographs is accompanied by Black’s own travelogue—a collection of observations, overheard conversations in cafe´s and public transportation, diner menus, bus timetables, historical facts, and snippets from daily news reports. A future classic of photography, this monograph is supported by an international touring exhibition and is a must-have for anyone with an interest in witnessing the reality of an America that’s been excluded from the American Dream.




Sidewalk


Book Description

This exceptonally strong and dynamic series of street photographs of New York is the winner of the 1999 European Publishers Award for Photography. As we follow Mermelstein through the city we are staggered by its drama and mystery. We confront characters who seem hyper-real - crazed, paranoid or simply pressured - and we come across incidents which seem totally surreal. Exhilarating and memorable, immensely funny yet deeply disturbing, this is a major work by an established talent. Includes 58 full-colour plates.




Magnum Cycling


Book Description

A remarkable work, celebrating the moments when world-class Magnum photographers turned their lenses to one of photography’s most rewarding subjects: cycling It’s no surprise that some of the world’s finest photographers have shot a bicycle race at some point in their careers. Cycling embodies the elements of a great photograph—the human form, pushing itself to physical extremes, thrilling landscapes, the spectacle of the crowd. It also provides a perfect opportunity for reportage, social documentary, and street photography because it happens in real time, in real life, and in the public environment. The book is grouped into thematic chapters, featuring works by a range of Magnum photographers—who are among the most prestigious in the world—expertly curated and accompanied by descriptive captions. Each chapter also features a series of photographs by a single photographer, telling the story of an iconic moment, event, or scene . Chapters include: Riders—famous names and characters and what their work is all about; Fans and Crowds—the mixture of young and old, families, and late-night revelers; Racing—what it is to race a bike and be a part of the circus; Events—from the Tour de France to racing around a small Belgian town; Settings—the mountains, the city, and the velodrome; and Winning—the price and spoils of victory. Magnum Cycling is a celebration of a perfect union between the great artists who have captured those most fugitive elements in cycling: the personalities, emotions, and human endurance.