Photograph, c-print on paper
Tate Collection
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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>
Chicago Illinois USA 1971
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
adults
animals: mammals
architecture
car
Chicago, Grant Park
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
countries and continents
emotions, concepts and ideas
ethnicity
evening
fine art and design, named works
formal qualities
horse
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
man
Meštrovic, Ivan, sculpture, ‘The Bowman’ 1926-7
military
monuments
objects
pedestrian crossing
people
photographic
places
society
soldier
statue
street
streetlight
times of the day
townscapes / man-made features
traffic lights
transport: land
USA, Illinois
work and occupations
<p><span>Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1971 </span>1971, printed 2014, is a colour photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. It depicts a street scene with an equestrian statue of a heroically naked Native American archer on the left, and a series of crossing lights on the right, with cars and pedestrians on the road behind. The statue is <span>The Bowman</span> 1926-7 by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrovic, which (along with another, <span>The Spearman </span>1926-7) stands at the intersection of Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue in Chicago’s Grant Park. The arrested motion of the horse and rider seems amusingly connected to the two red ‘Don’t Walk’ crossing lights.</p>
paper print photograph c-print
Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1971
image: 340 × 510 mm
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1971 </i>1971, printed 2014, is a colour photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. It depicts a street scene with an equestrian statue of a heroically naked Native American archer on the left, and a series of crossing lights on the right, with cars and pedestrians on the road behind. The statue is <i>The Bowman</i> 1926-7 by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrovic, which (along with another, <i>The Spearman </i>1926-7) stands at the intersection of Congress Parkway and Michigan Avenue in Chicago’s Grant Park. The arrested motion of the horse and rider seems amusingly connected to the two red ‘Don’t Walk’ crossing lights.</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 black and white. 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 animals: mammals architecture car Chicago, Grant Park cities, towns, villages (non-UK) countries and continents emotions, concepts and ideas ethnicity evening fine art and design, named works formal qualities horse Indigenous peoples of the Americas man Meštrovic, Ivan, sculpture, ‘The Bowman’ 1926-7 military monuments objects pedestrian crossing people photographic places society soldier statue street streetlight times of the day townscapes / man-made features traffic lights transport: land USA, Illinois work and occupations