Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/rene-burri-22358" aria-label="More by René Burri" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">René Burri</a>
Exercising on Beach Fort Lauderdale Florida USA 1966
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
adults
architecture
beach
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
countries and continents
emotions, concepts and ideas
exercising
figure
formal qualities
Fort Lauderdale
leisure and pastimes
objects
palm
parking meter
people
photographic
places
road
seascapes and coasts
silhouette
sport
sports and games
sunshine
swing
tools and machinery
townscapes / man-made features
USA, Florida
weather
<p><span>Exercising on the Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA 1966 </span>1966, printed 2014, is a black and white photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. The photograph depicts a beach-side scene, unpopulated apart from one figure hanging from a pull-up bar and bending at the waist towards the centre of the image. While there is only one human figure, the exercise equipment, pylons, palm trees and parking meters that make up the apparatus of the beach road all stand and lean more or less upright, giving them a figurative quality. Indeed, the eye struggles to differentiate the one human form among them, made more difficult by the fact that everything appears as a darkened silhouette against the sky.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
Exercising on the Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA 1966
image: 348 × 518 mm
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Exercising on the Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA 1966 </i>1966, printed 2014, is a black and white photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. The photograph depicts a beach-side scene, unpopulated apart from one figure hanging from a pull-up bar and bending at the waist towards the centre of the image. While there is only one human figure, the exercise equipment, pylons, palm trees and parking meters that make up the apparatus of the beach road all stand and lean more or less upright, giving them a figurative quality. Indeed, the eye struggles to differentiate the one human form among them, made more difficult by the fact that everything appears as a darkened silhouette against the sky.</p>
<p>This image is part of a portfolio of twenty-seven prints (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/burri-inauguration-of-the-chapel-of-notre-dame-du-haut-france-1955-p14301" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14301</span></a>–<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/burri-poster-of-che-guevara-1993-p14327" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P14327</span></a>), selected and compiled by Burri as a cohesive group shortly before his death in 2014. The selection spans his sixty-year career and includes a number of his best known black and white works, as well as a group of lesser known colour works. The portfolio was printed by Burri in 2014 and this copy is number three in an edition of five plus one artist’s proof. It contains fourteen black and white gelatin silver prints and thirteen colour C-prints, highlighting Burri’s diverse use of light and shadow alongside his experimental use of colour. Although predominantly known for shooting in black and white, Burri often travelled with two cameras, switching between them to capture images in both colour and greyscale. This was a progressive approach at the time, when colour photography was generally only used in advertising or for commercial practices. Burri revisited his archive of colour images later in his career and published the monograph <i>René Burri: Impossible Reminiscences</i> in 2013 as a decisive examination of this work.</p>
<p>Burri is most famous for his work as a member of the photojournalism agency Magnum Photos and the portfolio includes images produced in this context from projects in Brazil, Egypt, Lebanon, East Germany, China and South Korea, as well as an iconic image of Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara taken in Havana in 1963. The young Burri was introduced to Magnum by fellow Swiss photographer Werner Bischof and began working with the agency first as an associate in 1955, before becoming a full member in 1959. His extensive career encompassed a wide variety of photographic practices, including documentary, reportage, street photography and the photo-essay, as well as portraiture, architecture and landscape. He often worked on press assignments and personal projects simultaneously, building a varied portfolio of work in both black and white and colour. Burri’s use of both bird’s eye and worm’s eye views and his attention to the effects of light and shadow created by architectural forms are reminiscent of techniques used by modernist photographers in the early twentieth century.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Hans-Michael Koetzle, <i>René Burri Photographs</i>, London 2003.<br/>Hans-Michael Koetzle, <i>René Burri: Impossible Reminiscences</i>, London 2013.</p>
<p>Shoair Mavlian<br/>January 2015<br/>Arthur Goodwin<br/>October 2018</p>
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Summary
2019-01-18T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
adults architecture beach cities, towns, villages (non-UK) countries and continents emotions, concepts and ideas exercising figure formal qualities Fort Lauderdale leisure and pastimes objects palm parking meter people photographic places road seascapes and coasts silhouette sport sports and games sunshine swing tools and machinery townscapes / man-made features USA, Florida weather