Icongrapher in the public eye

Icongrapher in the public eye

A five-star hotel in Chiang Mai is hosting a retrospective on the oeuvre of a Swiss lensman who has spent much of his life capturing iconic figures on film

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Icongrapher in the public eye

Not many of us get the chance to gaze into the eyes of people destined to go down in history. Rene Burri, a Swiss photographer who began his career in 1955 at Magnum Photos agency, has engineered that opportunity on many occasions, and through his lens has captured, at their most elegant or enigmatic, mid-20th-century movers and shakers like Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso, Che Guevara, Jean Tinguely, Alberto Giacometti, Yves Klein, Anwar el-Sadat, Richard Nixon, Luis Barragan, Oscar Niemeyer and Richard Meier.

Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, as captured by Rene Burri.

Burri visited Bangkok once before, back in 1961, and now, at 81, he has returned to display selected images from his portfolio for his first exhibition at the Dhara Dhevi Hotel in Chiang Mai. “Rene Burri: The Iconic Photographs” was organised by Philippe and Jasmin Loup, who work and live in Switzerland, and it offers insights into both photographer’s sense of aesthetics and his philosophy in a milieu where the focus has been placed on site-specific presentation.

Burri’s work straddles the line between art and photojournalism — and there is no right or wrong. The question is perhaps about personal experience in aesthetic comprehension, as well as in the gravity of art history and the creator’s objectives. In fact, his photographs combine both aspects; in the series Giacometti (1960), China (1964) and Mexico (1969 & 1979), Burri triggers artistic concerns via thoughts and symbols rather than the pure information and timely messages which characterise Picasso (1957-58), Le Corbusier (1959), Yves Klein (1961), Che Guevara (1963), Nixon (1974) and Civil War in Lebanon (1982).

View of the Lannastyle building at Dhara Dhevi Hotel in Chiang Mai where the Rene Burri exhibition is being held.

The 100 photographs currently on display at Dhara Dhevi’s Lanna Pavilion span his entire career from his early years to the present day. To emphasise the specificity of this showcase, the organisers have presented Burri’s work alongside traditional northern (Lanna) architecture. As if they were installation art, similar sized prints of Burri’s original photos have been placed against white backgrounds and then hung from beams in the pavilion alongside traditional Lanna decorative banners called tung.

The best-known of Burri’s oeuvre are black-and-white images demonstrating his consummate skill in reading the light and contrast and in composition (remember that most of his work was done long before the invention of photo-editing software). Art historians, in particular, will find much to explore in Burri’s series on Alberto Giacometti, the legendary Swiss sculptor, since it reveals the artist’s preferred working environment and techniques he used for making expressionist sculpture. Burri, then just 27 years of age, photographed Giacometti in his studio, in a favourite cafe and in the act of producing his art; one image shows the sculptor closing his eyes as if he were working by touch, an indication of his strong of sense of visuality.

For his series on Le Corbusier, the Frenchman revered as one of the pioneers of modern architecture, Burri followed him to different places between 1959 to 1960 to document his working life. At the monastery of Sainte Marie de La Tourette, Burri captured the architect reviewing the construction plans, communicating with the friars and looking around the site where he would soon supervise the erection of one of his masterpieces. The photographer also spent time in Le Corbusier’s studio, attempting to capture aspects of the architect’s personality through patient observation.

Another exceptional series Burri did was on Luis Barragan and his architecture in Mexico City. Burri chose colour film to do justice to the bright hues of the buildings for which Barragan is most famous and to reflect Barragan’s architectural philosophy. The photos deal with geometric forms and objects, visual aesthetics and ideas and the outcome looks like a series of abstract paintings.

Burri was used to working closely with world-class creators and artists, and his photographs often contain the quality of art pieces in themselves. In fact, it’s very likely that we have seen Burri’s photographs in magazines and other media before, though in our ignorance were unable to recognise the photographer, perhaps because of the “iconic” quality of his oeuvre.

During a press conference called in Chiang Mai to publicise the current exhibition, Burri was asked how he managed to get permission to hover so close to so many great artists and architects, especially while they were in the process of creating.

“You have to show your sincerity, good behaviour and positive thinking as well as strong motivation” was his succinct reply.


The Burri showcase continues at the Dhara Dhevi Hotel until April 15. There is no admission fee.

A picture taken by Burri of a Picasso exhibition in Italy.

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