Born in Zürich in 1933, René Burri belongs to the great photographers of the second half of the 20th century. His body of work covers almost all major events of the last five decades, beginning with the Suez conflict in the 50ies, the crisis in Cyprus, the last communist revolution in San Marino. Burri photographed in Corea and Vietnam, he covered Cuba and Latin America. Again and again he went to the Middle East, travelled in China and Japan, or visited South Africa. René Burri saw the world, but - as a European - he never lost his sensitive eye on Europe, including Italy and France, and - above all - Germany (West and East) with its special role during the cold war. Although being a witness to politics and history, Burri never thought in terms of simple press photography. With the well trained eye of the artist he - right away from the start - was able to find striking metaphors for the condition of our world. This quality altogether with a deeply human feeling gives his photography a high cultural and artistic value and makes it a part of what can be called "world photography". The general public is familiar with his famous portraits of Che Guevara and Pablo Picasso or his iconic pictures "Sao Paulo" (1960) or "Ministery of Health, Rio de Janeiro" (1960) that can be found in every second poster shop. People interested in photography know his early photographic essay about the Germans or his reportage on the last Gauchos in Argentine. But these pictures only are the top of a huge body of work that covers almost all genres of photography: documentary and reportage photography, landscapes, portraits, architecture, street photography and expriments. Beside that René Burri always was active on the field of collage. He produced several important TV documentaries. And he always carries his little sketch book with him to express his ideas in another medium than photography. René Burris work executed with the camera could easily be described as one of the major contributions to the history of reportage photography. But that would ignore the fact that almost every picture is perfectly seen and goes far beyont the pure description of an event. Right from the start René Burri tried to combine the message with a strong esthetics that always was on the top of its time. This explains the fact, that even his very early pictures seem perfectly modern to us and speak to a contemporary public in a stunning visual language. Initially interested in the movies, René Burri turned to photography, as there was no school for cinema in Switzerland at that time. Anyway Burri kept his passion for the story - presented in series or in sequences of still pictures. This, perhaps, describes the fundamental difference to the one generation older Henri Cartier-Bresson. While the founder of Magnum agency is well known for his single images, capturing the "Decisive Moment", René Burri always tried to work on long term projects. His essays on the Germans or the Tchec, his portrait series on the painter Pablo Picasso, the architect Le Corbusier or the revolutionary Che Guevara, his reportages executed all over the world belong to the best examples of the genre. Which - finally - could not prevent, that many pictures during last decades have become sort of photo icons. One of his "Che's", one of his "Picasso's", his one of his "Le Corbusier's" is, no doubt, part of our common memory. The show at Esther Woerdehoff Gallery in Paris accompanies the retrospective at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and presents an alternative selection from René Burris huge Body of work. It was curated by Munich-based writer Hans-Michael Koetzle who also was responsible for the show at MEP.