"Bernd + Hilla Becher---
"Bernd Becher
Born in 1931, in Siegen, Germany,
Studied painting and lithography and later, typography.
"Hilla (Wobese) Becher)
Born in 1934, in Potsdam, Germany.
Studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she met Bernd Becher.
"The two artists first collaborated in 1959 and they married in 1961. they began working as freelance photographers, concentrating on industrial photography. In 1991, the artists won the leone d’oro award for sculpture at the venice biennale. This was possible because in 1969, the artists had called the architectural subject matter of their photographs, ‘anonymous sculpture’.
"Blast furnaces, cooling
towers, gasometers, water towers, lime kilns, compressors,
factory halls, head-frames of mine shafts - not the
stuff of excitement for most of us. However these anonymous
industrial structures have been a fountain of passion
for the german spouses bencher who have avidly
photographed them for over 40 years.
"Their black-and-white
images are all taken in the same clinical manner: a front
and profile angle provide a clear and objective documentation
of each structure, the building is placed in
the centre of the frame and isolated from its environment. The mass of photos are made coherent through
categorisation into typologies, revealing the vast
diversity of objects all with the same purpose. Non-identical, yet
uniform - the idiosyncratic
differences and similarities become fascinating.
"The Becher’s describe their
subjects as 'buildings where anonymity
is accepted to be the style.' Presented collectively,
their images transform these buildings into objects worthy of
interest, if not admiration.
"The typological approach to
photography has historic as well as aesthetic
significance. we turn to photography because it is a rich means
through which to represent - and interpret, reality -
and the documentary aspect to the Bechers work has been
widely appreciated by engineering and architectural
historians.
---
"Time
The objective direction of
their work was an unusual choice as after the two world
wars, documentary style had become impossible. It was of good
taste for german artists to ‘ignore history’.
"However the Bechers had
some precedents, for example in fellow german
photographer august sander,
who over the period of
forty years took portraits of thousands of german citizens. the
idea of 'the archive as art' was proposed by his oeuvre. He
arranged these portraits according to social type and
occupation - from peasant farmers to circus performers, to
prosperous businessmen."
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