Bernd & Hilla Becher

Rosenheim, Jeff L., with essays by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Virginia Heckert, and Lucy Sante, and an interview with Max Becher (2022)

This title is in print.

Preview online Buy the book

Watsonline WorldCat

Publication Details

Description

For more than five decades, Bernd (1931–2007) and Hilla (1934–2015) Becher collaborated on photographs of industrial architecture in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States. This sweeping monograph features the Bechers’ quintessential pictures, which present water towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces, and more as sculptural objects. Beyond the Bechers’ iconic Typologies, the book includes Bernd’s early drawings, Hilla’s independent photographs, and excerpts from their notes, sketchbooks, and journals. The book’s authors offer new insights into the development of the artists’ process, their work’s conceptual underpinnings, the photographers’ relationship to deindustrialization, and the artists’ legacy. An essay by award-winning cultural historian Lucy Sante and an interview with Max Becher, the artists’ son, make this volume an unrivaled look into the Bechers’ art alongside their career, life, and subjects.

Table of contents

Director’s Foreword
Max Hollein

Introduction
Jeff L. Rosenheim

Bernd and Hilla Becher: A Lifelong Project of Uninflected Passion
Virginia Heckert

Documenting the Whole Plant: A Case Study of the Concordia Mine
Gabriele Conrath-Scholl

A Postmortem for Industry
Lucy Sante

Plates
I. Early Works by Bernd Becher
II. Early Works by Hilla Becher
III. Works by Bernd and Hilla Becher

A Conversation with Max Becher
Jeff L. Rosenheim

Works in the Exhibition and Catalogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Jeff L. Rosenheim is Joyce Frank Menschel Curator in Charge, the Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Gabriele Conrath-Scholl is director of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur.

Virginia Heckert is Curator of Photographs, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Lucy Sante is an arts critic, essayist, artist, and visiting professor of writing and photography at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Related Titles

Titles by thematic category (361)

Modern and Contemporary Art

Titles by author (25)

Max Becher

Gabriele Conrath-Scholl

Virginia Heckert

Jeff Rosenheim

Lucy Sante

Related Content

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (9)

Essays (8)

Art and Photography: The 1980s

Conceptual Art and Photography

International Pictorialism

The New Documentary Tradition in Photography

The New Vision of Photography

Photography at the Bauhaus

Photography in Düsseldorf

Photography in Europe, 1945–60

Timelines (1)

Germany and Switzerland, 1900 A.D.–present

Exhibition

Bernd & Hilla Becher

July 15–November 6, 2022

The renowned German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher (1931–2007; 1934–2015) changed the course of late twentieth-century photography. Working as a rare artist couple, they focused on a single subject: the disappearing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America that fueled the modern era. Their seemingly objective style recalled nineteenth- and early twentieth-century precedents but also resonated with the serial approach of contemporary Minimalism and Conceptual art. Equally significant, it challenged the perceived gap between documentary and fine-art photography.

Using a large-format view camera, the Bechers methodically recorded blast furnaces, winding towers, grain silos, cooling towers, and gas tanks with precision, elegance, and passion. Their rigorous, standardized practice allowed for comparative analyses of structures that they exhibited in grids of between four and thirty photographs. They described these formal arrangements as “typologies” and the buildings themselves as “anonymous sculpture.”

This posthumous retrospective celebrates the Bechers’ remarkable achievement and is the first ever organized with full access to the artists’ personal collection of working materials and their comprehensive archive.

Plan Ahead

MetPublications