Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Winding Tower, 6 Views, Mosley Comon Colliery, Manchester, Great Britain
Bernd and Hilla Becher German
Not on view
Whenever possible, the Bechers tried to make in-the-round photographic sequences of each chosen subject for their ever-expanding archive. Unlike the winding towers seen nearby, here the upper part of the tower contains the engine that activates the cables and pulls up the coal cars. What is mostly invisible in these top-heavy buildings with their odd modernist ethos is the winding apparatus. Put together in a grid, they have a strangely fascinating effect, like the arrangements of exotic sea creatures by Ernst Haeckel seen in the wall case near the gallery entrance.
This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
