Product Description

Between the years 1955-1965 Magnum photographer Rene Burri spent much time with Le Corbusier, photographing him in the most diverse situations.Always chasing that special moment when everything is just right, Burri has captured moments in Le Corbusier´s private and professional life which provide fascinating insight into the man behind the public figure. These beautiful photographs are an outstanding document of value for art and architectural history and will provide many a surprise for those who browse through this volume. At a special reduced price, the book is immediately accessible to a wide audience of Le Corbusier fans, eager to catch a more personal glimpse of this renowned architect

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1782793 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06-27
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 3.27 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 181 pages

From Amazon.com
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, a Swiss-born Frenchman better known as Le Corbusier, may well have been the 20th century's greatest architect. He was also a capable painter, a brilliant theoretician and polemicist, and a terrible city planner. This book does not offer the usual analysis of Le Corbusier's work or his place in history; rather, it is the result of the interaction between Corbu and René Burri, a young Magnum photographer who documented a bit of the architect's life and a few of his buildings between 1955 and his death in 1965.

It's a human story as much as an architectural one, giving clues about how Corbu lived, worked, and related to people in his later years, and how people lived in and used his buildings. This is a wide-ranging work of photojournalism that stands up well decades after its inception. It also provides a look at seven of the designer's structures, including landmarks such as Villa Savoye, the Ronchamp Chapel, La Tourette monastery, and the Unité d'Habitation in Marseilles.

This large, horizontal-format book of 184 pages contains hundreds of photos, mostly black-and-white, and they give people as much prominence as the structures, bringing the architect, his clients, their buildings, and the buildings' occupants to life in a way that conventional architecture tomes do not. A fascinating, one-of-a-kind book that forms a valuable supplement to the standard works on Le Corbusier, it should appeal equally to those interested in documentary photography, architecture, and major cultural figures. --John Pastier

House + Garden
The images of the master inspecting a construction site with the Dominican Fathers, his clients, are reason enough to won this portfolio of candid photos by Rene Burri.