Born in 1933 in Zurich, Switzerland. Died in 2014 in Zurich.
René Burri studied graphic design and photography at the Zurich School of Applied Arts under Hans Finsler and Johann Itten. Starting with documentary photography, he was temporarily working as a camera assistant and opened a studio with Walter Binder. In 1955, he photographed Touch of Music for the Deaf, a documentary about a music teacher and her work with deaf children, which was published in Life Magazine and facilitated his joining of Magnum Photos.
After 1956, he worked as a photojournalist and traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East as well as Latin America, where he worked on a photo essay on gauchos, which was published in Du Magazine in 1959. René Burri captured everyday situations and street scenes as well as important topical events and portraits of his contemporaries. He photographed artists like Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Tinguely and Le Corbusier. In 1963, he worked in Cuba and photographed Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara during an interview with an American journalist. The iconic portrait of the revolutionary smoking his cigar has become world-famous.
In addition to the publication of his photo essays in Du and Life Magazine his works also appeared in other major newspapers and magazines, such as Paris Match, Stern or The New York Times. Burri also filmed various documentaries and participated in the founding of Magnum Films. In 1965, he spent several months in China and worked on the film The Two Faces of China, which was produced by the BBC. In 1962, Burri opened the Magnum Gallery in Paris.
In 1998, he won the Erich Salomon Prize of the German Photographic Society and in 2011 the Swiss Press Photo Lifetime Achievement Award. Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris showed a major retrospective of his photographic work in 2004 and Musée de l’Elysée presented the solo exhibition René Burri, l’explosion du regard in 2020.
