Photograph, c-print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
Portfolio
<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>
Hotel Marika Beirut Lebanon 1991
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
architecture
Bierut, Hotel Marika
bomb damage
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
colour
countries and continents
decay
desolation
destruction
documentary
domestic
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
history
hotel
interior - non-specific
interiors
Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990
Lebanon
military
photographic
places
residential
ruins
universal concepts
<p><span>Hotel Marika, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991 </span>1991, printed 2014, is a colour photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. It shows a decaying room strewn with the remains of furniture, broken roof tiles and general debris. The plaster on the walls is crumbling and damaged but the vibrantly coloured paint is still visible in large areas, a different shade of blue or purple on each section, with a band of white in the upper part of the room. Through the doorway in the middle of the photograph is another, similarly ruined room painted in a shade of light blue. The Marika Hotel was a former brothel in the red-light district of Beirut which was bombed out like so much of the city during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990. Burri took this photograph just a year after the end of the war, capturing the recent carnage.</p>
paper print photograph c-print
Hotel Marika, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991
image: 360 × 510 mm
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>Hotel Marika, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991 </i>1991, printed 2014, is a colour photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. It shows a decaying room strewn with the remains of furniture, broken roof tiles and general debris. The plaster on the walls is crumbling and damaged but the vibrantly coloured paint is still visible in large areas, a different shade of blue or purple on each section, with a band of white in the upper part of the room. Through the doorway in the middle of the photograph is another, similarly ruined room painted in a shade of light blue. The Marika Hotel was a former brothel in the red-light district of Beirut which was bombed out like so much of the city during the Lebanese Civil War of 1975-1990. Burri took this photograph just a year after the end of the war, capturing the recent carnage.  </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
architecture Bierut, Hotel Marika bomb damage cities, towns, villages (non-UK) colour countries and continents decay desolation destruction documentary domestic emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities history hotel interior - non-specific interiors Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990 Lebanon military photographic places residential ruins universal concepts