Detail: The University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong presents a major exhibition,
which brings together René Burri’s most significant architectural photographs, famous buildings
and portraits of architects, demonstrating his keen interest in architecture within social and
cultural contexts.
Burri’s work is often referred to as «constructive photography». Creating, drawing on life and
portraying utopias – including their potential defects – have always offered him greater
inspiration than destruction and chaos. Burri is a photographer of vision, an artist who tests out
the revolutionary implications of the imagination. This explains his
early interest in China, an ancient civilisation which, in the middle of the 20th century, was
searching for new concepts to overcome famine, illiteracy and snowballing demographics.
Burri witnessed and documented the creation of futuristic city Brasilia, the Brazilian federal
capital that plays host to stunning architectural treasures created by Brazilian, modernist
architect Oscar Niemeyer. UTOPIA features many of these fascinating images, as well as portraits
of Niemeyer and the influential, award-winning architect Le Corbusier.
About the Artist:
Born in 1933, and celebrating his 80th birthday this year, René Burri was elected as a member of
the prestigious Magnum Photo Agency in 1959, where he met the great photographers Robert Capa,
Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour. The globe-trotting photojournalist is well
known for his photos of major political, historical and cultural events and key figures of the
second half of the 20th century.