Review: René Burri - Utopia

The optimistic post-war era of renewal is well captured in "Utopia", a collection of Swiss photographer René Burri's architecturally themed images.

The 80-year-old Burri is a master of capturing the subtlety of architectural form and the nonchalant order of objects using the fundamental tools of photography - light and shadow. Especially known are his 1960s portrait series of the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara and a continuing series about leading architects.

This exhibition is an exploration into the architectural theme. In 1960, Burri followed Le Corbusier as the elderly architect met his clients, the Dominican monks of the Convent of La Tourette at Eveux-sur-Arbresle, near Lyon. Le Corbusier was charged with designing a new building containing 100 individual residential cells, a rooftop cloister, chapel and library for this silent order, and Burri photographed him discussing his plans.

Le Corbusier's modernist secular pragmatism met a normally insular religious order. Burri captures this tense counterpoint and its conclusion: the newly completed reinforced concrete building sitting on an open hillside location.

In the same year, Burri travelled to document the construction and inauguration of Brasilia, the newly built capital of Brazil. Designed by urban planner Lúcio Costa, landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, it also features the brilliance of architect Oscar Niemeyer's individual buildings.