Photograph, c-print on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
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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>
Azarieh building Beirut Lebanon 1991
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
architecture
Beirut, Azarieh Street, Azarieh Building
bomb damage
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
destruction
documentary
emotions, concepts and ideas
features
formal qualities
history
Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990
military
photographic
places
ruins
sea
seascapes and coasts
townscape
townscapes / man-made features
universal concepts
window
<p><span>View from the Azarieh Building, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991 </span>1991, printed 2014, is a colour photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. It shows a view of a portion of the city looking out to the Mediterranean Sea from the centre of town. The buildings shown initially appear normal but on closer inspection the scars of war are clear in the broken walls and absence of windows. The remains of a window stretch across the centre of the image. Fragments of glass resting at the bottom of the frame form jagged abstract shapes in layers of translucency, ghostly and intangible. The Azarieh Building is a large multipurpose building on Azarieh Street in the Central District of Beirut. Like so much of the city, it took significant bomb-damage 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
View from the Azarieh building, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991
image: 345 × 503 mm
Presented by Pierre Brahm 2015
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>View from the Azarieh Building, Beirut, Lebanon, 1991 </i>1991, printed 2014, is a colour photograph by the Swiss photographer René Burri. It shows a view of a portion of the city looking out to the Mediterranean Sea from the centre of town. The buildings shown initially appear normal but on closer inspection the scars of war are clear in the broken walls and absence of windows. The remains of a window stretch across the centre of the image. Fragments of glass resting at the bottom of the frame form jagged abstract shapes in layers of translucency, ghostly and intangible. The Azarieh Building is a large multipurpose building on Azarieh Street in the Central District of Beirut.  Like so much of the city, it took significant bomb-damage 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 Beirut, Azarieh Street, Azarieh Building bomb damage cities, towns, villages (non-UK) destruction documentary emotions, concepts and ideas features formal qualities history Lebanese Civil War, 1975-1990 military photographic places ruins sea seascapes and coasts townscape townscapes / man-made features universal concepts window