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Blackout New York

Blackout in New York. For one night, Burri follows the events, with eight rolls of 35mm film. Without a flash. Using only the scarcely available light. Burri's photo series is not a report in the traditional sense. More a meditation on light, or rather the lack of it.

The event went down in history as the "Northeast Balckout of 1965". In fact it was not only New York's city centre that was affected by the blackout. Ontario, that is, the south-eastern part of Canada, was also hit by the power failure. And so were Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, and the State of New York - an area more than half the size of Germany. The accident is supposed to have caught about 25 million people unaware.

Burri's photo series is not a report in the traditional sense, not a deliberately structured story. As an experiment, it is less and more at the same time. Burri's cycle is an attempt, an essay in the true meaning of the word. A meditation on light, or rather the lack of it. A reflection on seeing - and hence of photography itself. Little is shown and the little there is, is often difficult to decipher. Burri takes us into a world of shadows, and it naturally takes our eyes a while to acclimatise. What we enter is a dimly lit hall of sculptures. The light illuminates the exhibits like a stroboscope, sparse, hinting, pointed. One might speak of a great poetry emanating from these pictures. No facts are reported. What is told is a fairytale in which people have lost something they usually take for granted: light. For an unpredictable period of time it vanishes, leaving a metropolis to sort out the way it behaves. For one short night, Rene Burri follow the events, without a flas h of course. It is only the scarcely available light that acts like a sculptor. And Rene Burri is there to watch it at work."

from "Tender is the Night" by Hans Michael Koetzle