"I Killed My Mentor!"

São Paulo, Brazil, 1960

Photograph: Rene Burri - Magnum Photos

Speaking about the photograph not long before he died in 2014, Burri described how it came about. “Did I know those men were there when I took that photograph? No. Buildings weren’t guarded in those days. It was a question of getting to the top and knocking on the door… ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come in!’ So I walked out on to the terrace and, at that moment, those guys came from nowhere and I shot five images.”

For him, more than anything else, the picture simply represented a professional coming of age. “In those days Henri Cartier-Bresson [the president of Magnum] limited us to lenses from 35mm to 90mm. When I showed him the photos he said: ‘Brilliant René!’ The lens I used was 180 mm – I never told him! At that point I broke loose from my mentor. I killed my mentor!” (The Guardian)