René Burri, one degree of separation between me and Che Guevara

I met one of my favorite photographers, René Burri, last week! A few years ago, I fell in love with this beautiful image of Brazil I discovered on Burri’s great photography book:

In 1963 while working in Cuba, he made portraits of a young Che Guevara:

I went to see Burri exposing his Vintage elegant shots of the polymath architect/urbanist, Le Corbusier:

The photographer has managed to catch the architect in his creative modes/moods:

I found out that often times, Le Corbusier didn’t even notice Burri taking his picture:

I particularly like this one:

Burri was present at La Tourette monastery with Le Corbusier and he recorded some very interesting images of the monks surrounding the architect in 1959:

I love this monk (with the hat) listening in the conversation below:

Artist and photo-reporter in one, Burri, started to shadow Le Corbusier while still a student—he became the visual chronicler and personal photographer of the architect:

The whole exhibition was a glimpse into the creative life of Le Corbusier (not being among my favorite architects, I was never particularly curious about him); I learned much about his work thanks to Burri.

The master was present to kindly sign books,

and learning that I am Iranian, he tried to add another word to his autograph: cheilechoub (ch in Swiss German sounds like kh) or “very good” in Persian:

Check out some of Burri’s work here.

To see the breadth of his work (eye) visit Magnum’s site here.

To see an interesting view about Che Guevara go here.