Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
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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>
Road Abu Dhabi to Dubai UAE 1975
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
aerial view
architecture
countries and continents
desert
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
landscape
palm
photographic
places
road
sea
seascapes and coasts
townscapes / man-made features
United Arab Emirates
village
<p><span>Road from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, UAE, 1975 </span>1975, printed 2014, is a black and white photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. Taken looking down from an almost bird’s eye view, it shows a portion of a road curving away from a village, visible in the top left-hand corner; the sea and horizon cross the image at the top. The sand on either side of the road is littered with palm trees and areas enclosed by makeshift fencing, and shows the tracks and turning circles of vehicles. At the bottom of the image, the road disappears under a layer of sand. From the angle at which the photograph is taken, Burri is likely to have been travelling across the road in an aircraft.</p>
paper print photograph gelatin silver
Road from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, UAE, 1975
image: 352 × 522 mm
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
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<p>
<i>Road from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, UAE, 1975 </i>1975, printed 2014, is a black and white photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. Taken looking down from an almost bird’s eye view, it shows a portion of a road curving away from a village, visible in the top left-hand corner; the sea and horizon cross the image at the top. The sand on either side of the road is littered with palm trees and areas enclosed by makeshift fencing, and shows the tracks and turning circles of vehicles. At the bottom of the image, the road disappears under a layer of sand. From the angle at which the photograph is taken, Burri is likely to have been travelling across the road in an aircraft.   </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>
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<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
aerial view architecture countries and continents desert emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities landscape palm photographic places road sea seascapes and coasts townscapes / man-made features United Arab Emirates village