A new exhibition at Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, curated by Clotilde Burri-Blanc and Sam Stourdzé, seeks to contextualize and draw attention to Rene Burri’s consistent use of pyramid motifs in his photographic work.

On his first trip to Egypt in 1958, René Burri discovered the pyramid of Saqqara. Burri grew up among the alpine mountains of Switzerland, so he was instinctively drawn to these prodigious ancient constructions from the hand of man. He saw them as mountains in the desert, but without the snow.

Over the course of his lengthy career, he will travel to Mexico, Guatemala, and Egypt several times to satiate his curiosity. He photographs pyramids in black and white, and in color. Even when in distant corners of the world, his photographs are still full of references to the triangular shape of the pyramids: roofs of houses, tipi of Indians, modern architecture, Zen gardens and fancy geometry. Rene saw pyramids everywhere. He covered his sketchbooks and even collected pyramid-shaped objects.