Beijing, China, 1964, © René Burri/Magnum Photos, from the book Impossible Reminiscences (Phaidon, 2013). “In Tiananmen Square, in front of the Forbidden City, there were mass demonstrations against the Americans in Vietnam.”

Born in Switzerland in 1933, René Burri first picked up a Leica during his military service. Through and introduction from Werner Bischof, Burri joined Magnum Photos in 1959 and went on to publish reportage in Life, Look, Stern and Paris Match among countless other publications. One of the remarkable things about Burri’s career, was that from the mid-1950s he worked with both black and white and color. Often, Hans-Michael Koetzle writes in his essay that accompanies Burri’s new book, Impossible Reminiscences, released this week by Phaidon, photographers are great at one or the other, or move on from black and white to color and seldom look back professionally. “[Burri] did the one without abandoning the other,” Koetzle writes. “….Burri has consistently pursued two goals, photographed in black and white and color, as a journalist and as an artist, which—precisely reckoned—would mean that he has lived four lives in photography.”

Impossible Reminiscences features more than 170 of Burri’s lesser-known color images, drawn and edited by Burri from his archive over the course of eight years, and accompanied by his personal reminiscences.
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©Estate of Leonard Freed–Magnum Photos (Brigitte Freed)

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, late Magnum photographer Leonard Freed’s coverage of the event will be released in book form for the first time in This Is the Day: The March on Washington (Getty Publications, February 2013). The march featured Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech and helped pave the way for the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Freed’s moving photographs of the day are accompanied in the book by a first-hand account of the event by civil rights activist and author Julian Bond.  The book will have its official launch February 5 (today) at Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, West Dining Room, Sixth Floor, Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave., S.E., Washington, D.C. Michael Eric Dyson and Paul Farber, who both contributed essays to the book, with join along with Freed’s widow, Brigitte Freed, for a conversation about the book and the legacy of the march.
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All Photographs © Josef Koudelka. Behind the CKD Praha factory, looking towards the Hloubetin district.

In a recent survey leading up to the release of the 30th anniversary issue of PDN, readers voted Josef Koudelka‘s Invasion 68: Prague (Aperture, 2008) one of the most influential books of the decade. The book (which has been published in in ten countries, most recently in Russia) gathers more than 250 of the photographs Koudelka took in August 1968 during the Prague Spring, when Warsaw Pact tanks invaded Prague and Soviet soldiers clashed with citizens and protesters. (more…)