Burk Uzzle

Brand New Highway

1970

Burk Uzzle was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1938. His career received its first major impetus in 1962, when Life magazine hired him as the youngest ever photographer to work for them. For many years, Uzzle continued to produce work for Life as well as other publications worldwide. Some of his most notable work during this time included coverage of the Martin Luther King funeral in 1968 (Newsweek used one of his images as their cover photo that week), as well as his Woodstock work. But his photographic work went beyond photojournalism. His first book in 1971 featured his American landscape work. Later in the 70s, he began experimenting with still-life photography. In 1984, another monograph, All American, was published. Museum shows followed, including solo shows at the Chicago Art Institute in 1971, the Philadelphia Museum in 1984 and the Chrysler Museum in 1992. In 2016, Uzzle’s work was featured in triple-venue exhibitions in his home state of North Carolina, at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh at the Ackland Museum of Art, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham. Uzzle’s work is included in the holdings of many prominent museum and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the private Margulies collection in Miami and Bidwell Projects in Ohio.