Judging from the show, those experiments have been an unqualified success. The pictures narrate a visual history of the second half of the 20th century, from the Suez War in 1956 to the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. It’s difficult to see a theme in Burri’s work: he’s obviously a free spirit who likes to push the limits of photojournalism. Yet he can be extremely conservative; in all of his war pictures, for example, there is not one cadaver. What holds the show together is two recurring elements–his precise, graphic compositions and his filmmaker’s eye for detail and motion.
The first was learned. While at the School of Arts & Crafts, Burri studied with Hans Finsler, a follower of the 1920s New Objectivity movement, who taught his students how to organize their work using distinguishing lines and visual relationships. Some of Burri’s most beautiful images, such as “Men on a Roof, Sao Paulo, 1960,” are studies of graphically organized chaos, with distinct layers and sharp lines.
The second–his gift for seeing life from a filmmaker’s point of view–was innate. Ever since he was a student, Burri has made documentaries. In fact, his entire photographic oeuvre can be seen as a series of still-life documentaries. Unlike most photojournalists, who subscribe to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s notion that photography is the act of capturing a “decisive moment,” Burri has always believed that the camera preserves a succession of moments. Though his most famous pictures, such as Che Guevara puffing on a cigar or Pablo Picasso in his Cannes studio, are clearly records of unique moments, when mounted with other images from the series–as they are in the exhibit–they seem parts of a freeze-frame short film.
Burri began covering international crises in part to emulate one of his heroes, war photographer Robert Capa. His first conflict was the Suez War in 1956, followed by Cyprus, Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. Throughout, Burri remained a freelancer, selling his pictures via the Magnum photo agency. This freedom allowed him to choose his assignments and to build strong relationships with subjects such as Le Corbusier, Giacometti and Picasso. Burri’s portraits of Picasso are among the most revealing ever done of the artist, as well as some of Burri’s favorites. After trying to photograph Picasso for six years, Burri finally tracked him down at a hotel in Nimes, France, in 1957. The porter mistook him for a member of Picasso’s entourage, and showed him where the artist was enjoying a raucous breakfast, splayed across the bed with a Gypsy band playing. With Picasso’s silent approval, Burri started shooting. Picasso, he said, represented “endless possibilities.” As this retrospective shows, he used them exceedingly well.
