BURK UZZLE
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BIO
Uzzle (b. 1938, Raleigh, NC) began working as a photographer at age 14. He became a staff photographer for the News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) at 17, and by 1957 was hired as a contract photographer for the Black Star Agency. During that time he documented the Civil Rights Movement and produced some of the most iconic images of the assassination and funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1962, at age 23, he became the youngest photographer ever hired by LIFE magazine.
In 1967, Uzzle became a member of Magnum Photos, the prestigious international cooperative founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson. An active contributor to the organization for over sixteen years, he was twice elected president. He now works as an independent photographer. It was Cartier-Bresson who advised Uzzle to study the Quattrocento painters which, as he says, erased his laser vision that riveted on a single headline moment, opened his eyes to the play of planes, events and things back and forth in space, and “to head me into confusion, riot, and the camera’s gluttony and the simultaneous distraction of the world.”
Burk Uzzle has conducted a visual love affair with America for over six decades. Having traveled to nearly every country in Europe and Southeast Asia, Brazil, Peru, Nigeria, Egypt and beyond, Uzzle says “America is the most exotic country in the world. It is also the loneliest.” A nuanced composition blending American culture, the quirky and obscure, with a poignant yet empathetic sense of irony, his images provide an intuitive and unique view of the persons, places and oddities that define the singular and diverse character of America.
Like the New Topographics, his work is an intriguing interplay of simple shapes, contrasting colors, and a simplification of the visual field. His flattened images prompt us to consider that which is not readily apparent, questioning and confronting the harmony and tension present not only in his aesthetic but in our individual and cultural psyches. Throughout his prolific career, Uzzle has produced some of the most recognizable images we have of Woodstock, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cambodian War, and small-town America.
Five monographs of the artist’s work have been published; Landscapes, Magnum, 1967, All American, Aperture, 1985; Progress Report on Civilization, Chrysler Museum, 1992; A Family Named Spot, Five Tie, 2006; and his first book of color photographs, Just Add Water: Photographs by Burk Uzzle, Five Ties, 2007. His work has been included in numerous anthologies including A Day in the Life of America, Harper Collins, 1986; Master Photographs, International Center of Photography, 1988; Magnum: Fifty Years on the Front Line of History, Grove Press, 1999; The Great LIFE Photographers, Bullfinch, 2004; American: The Social Landscape from 1940 – 2006, Masterpieces of American Photography, Damiani Editore, 2006; and Rethinking Landscape, Taubman Museum of Art, 2008.
The work of Burk Uzzle has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the world including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk; International Center of Photography, New York; Laurence Miller Gallery, New York; The Photographer’s Gallery, London; Galerie Agathe Gaillard, Paris; Bodo Nieman Gallery, Berling; and the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. In 2016, a retrospective of his work will open at the Nasher Museum of Art, Durham; the Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill; and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.