Hilla Becher

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Bernd and Hilla Becher: Basic Forms

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

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Other editions: 1999

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Field Trips

Hilla Becher; Robert Smithson; Bernd Becher

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Bernd Und Hilla Becher: Festschrift, Erasmuspreis 2002

Hilla Becher; Susanne Lange; Bernd Becher

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Industrial Landscapes

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

The great photographers of industrial landscapes offer a stunning retrospective of their most compelling work, featuring coal mines, iron ore mines, steel mills, power stations with cooling towers, lime kilns, and grain elevators, among other subjects.

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Framework Houses: Of the Siegen Industrial Region

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

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Zeche Hannibal

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher; SK Stiftung Kultur

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Basic Forms

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

For nearly four decades this renowned German husband-and-wife team of photographers has been paying tribute to the industrial landscape. Their work ranks internationally among the most significant achievements in the field of industrial photography. The 64 images in this collection comprise a typical cross-section of the Bechers' work. Captured in stark black and white, the structures here -- American and European grain elevators, gas tanks, blast furnaces, water towers -- are impeccably presented in square, frontal images which highlight their architectural complexities as well as their otherworldly presence upon a vast horizontal landscape. Making no attempts to glamorize their subjects, and offering no visual commentary, the Bechers nevertheless manage to capture the eerily beautiful austerity of these familiar structures. Their unadorned approach which portrays leaden skies and excludes any organic presence, enables viewers to study and appreciate the endless variations of industrial architecture, structures which although an integral part of the world's landscape, are often overlooked.

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Serien

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher; Ariane Grigoteit; Britta Farber

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Mineheads

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

Since 1959 Bernd and Hilla Becher have been obsessively photographing imperiled industrial structures such as pit-head frames, water towers, blast furnaces, cooling towers, gas tanks, and silos. As documenters of the industrial era in Europe and the United States--an era now drawing to a close--they are not only photographers, but "industrial archaeologists," salvaging testimonies of past developments in the form of "readable" documents for posterity. At the same time, the Bechers could also be called conceptual artists, as their photographs reveal the meaning and transformative character of structure. The Bechers spent two decades searching industrial regions of Western Europe and North America for mineheads. These delicate giants stand over the shaft entrances of mines, housing the cages attached to cables that move up and down the mine shaft, bringing minerals to the surface and transferring miners back and forth from underground. Regardless of their subject, the Bechers' photographic technique has remained constant for decades. Eschewing dramatic lighting effects, they shoot under overcast skies, framing their subject in the center of the picture and shooting from a slightly raised standpoint. The effect of their cool, rigorous approach is to reduce the individual structures they photograph within each typological category to morphological studies executed with artful neutrality. Their single-minded vision, signature style, and photographic identity have influenced an entire generation of younger photographers and have had a major impact on the worlds of conceptual art, architecture, sculpture, and criticism. * Not for sale in France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria.

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Industrial Facades

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher; Hilla Becker

The more than two hundred striking duotone plates in Hilla and Bernd Becher's Industrial Facades continue the famousDýsseldorf photographers' formal investigation of industrial structures, in this case the frontal elevations of factory buildings. Like the Bechers' earlier books on water towers, blast furnaces, and gas tanks, Industrial Facades once again clearly displays their serenely cool, rigorous approach to the structures they photograph as vaariations on an ideal form. The Bechers make no attempt to analyze or explain their subjects. Captions contain only the barest of information: time and place. Industrial Facades covers the whole range of periods and designs representing this building type: from austere brick buildings of the early industrial age and the arched windows and turrets decorating historicist facades, to the concrete and glass functionalist constructions of the 1950s and 1960s, to today's rectangular, windowless halls. These photographs give the lie to Louis Sullivan's often misunderstood motto, "form follows function," for the external appearance of the factory buildings shown here are hardly determined by their internal working processes. For this reason, the Bechers' photographs do not really illustrate the development of modern industrial architecture, nor the achievements of functionalist building, but rather the achievements of banal, everyday architecture, produced by builders trained in crafts or by engineers trained in the necessities of the industrial process. * Not for sale in France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria

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Fabrikhallen

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher; Klaus Bussmann; Westfalisches Landesmuseum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Munster

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Other editions: 1994

Bernd Und Hilla Becher: Industriephotographie Im Spiegel Der Tradition

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher; Ruhr-Universitat Bochum; Monika Steinhauser; Kai-Uwe Hemken

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Gas Tanks

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

The Bechers' industrial vision has become an essential part of the way we see today; their head-on, deadpan photographs of pithead gear, water towers, and blast furnaces have for more than 30 years expressed a serenely cool, rigorous approach that reduces the individual structures they photograph to variations on an ideal form. In this, their latest work, the Bechers present four principally different forms of gas holders or gas tanks in 102 photographs taken during the years 1963-1992 in Great Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, and the United States. The subjects are photographed under overcast skies that eliminate expressive variations in lighting; the Bechers make no attempt to analyze or explain them. Captions contain only the barest of information: time and place. On the subject of gas holders, the Bechers limit their remarks to a minimal functional description, leaving the esthetic dimension of their subject to the photographs themselves: much of the fascination of these photographs lies in the fact that these unadorned metallic structures, presumably built with little concern for their visual impact, are almost invariably striking in appearance. Bernd and Hilla Becher teach at the Dusseldorf Art Academy. They began their collaborative photographic enterprise in 1957, when they did a study of workers' houses in their native Germany. The Bechers follow in a distinguished line of German photographers that includes August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Werner Manz, all of whom contributed in different ways to the definition of "objective" photography.

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Becher, Mapplethorpe, Sherman: Museo De Monterrey, Abril-Junio 1992

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher; Robert Mapplethorpe; Cindy Sherman; Museo de Monterrey

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Pennsylvania Coal Mine Tipples

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

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Blast Furnaces

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

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Watertowers

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

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Fachwerkhauser Des Siegener Industriegebietes

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher

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Bernd Und Hilla Becher: Fotografien 1957 Bis 1975 [Ausstellung 7.11. Bis 7.12.1975 Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, Im Januar 1976 Kunsthalle Tubingen Katalog]

Hilla Becher; Bernd Becher; Klaus Honnef; Kunsthalle Tubingen; Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn

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