The Swiss photographer René Burri (1933 – 2014) was one of the great photojournalists of the 20th century. From 1955 (a full member from 1959), the photographer, filmmaker, and painter was a member of Magnum, and traveled all over the world on behalf of well-known international magazines. The focus of the exhibition at Kunsthalle Erfurt is his best-known and perhaps most important body of work, ‘The Germans’.
In 1957, Burri, whose mother came from a village near Freiburg, began photographing the neighbors. He then accompanied developments in East and West Germany for forty years. In 1962 the first version of his book ‘The Germans’ was published with texts by Hans Magnus Enzensberger – a milestone in photojournalism. With his camera, Burri was looking for another Germany, that of writers and thinkers.
