Liverpool IV
Höfer is known today for photographing the empty rooms of schools, galleries, and grand hotels. But before she began picturing these interior worlds, she experimented with street photography, recording architectural exteriors in order to capture the shifting surfaces of city life. Here, the flat expanse of a public mural nearly fills the frame, with painted figures standing in for urban passersby. Though it advertises an industrial car park, the imagery is imprecisely hand-rendered and weathered with age—devoid of any modern sheen. Höfer photographed this while on assignment in Liverpool, during a brief stint working for newspapers. Later, as a student of conceptual photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, she would maintain this interest in the curiosities and contradictions of the built environment.
Artwork Details
- Title: Liverpool IV
- Artist: Candida Höfer (German, born 1944)
- Date: 1968
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Sheet: 8 × 8 in. (20.3 × 20.3 cm)
Frame: 20 3/16 × 16 1/4 in. (51.2 × 41.2 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2020
- Object Number: 2020.199
- Rights and Reproduction: © Candida Höfer/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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