Those Amazing Bechers

Bernd and Hilla Becher practiced a wonderful style of documentary photography that can trace its roots back to Walker Evans (1940s), Eugene Atget (1900-1920), and even Edouard Baldus (1850s). The Bechers persistent studies of industrial structures like water towers and gas tanks have produced what they themselves called "Typologies". For more than forty years the couple has addressed their subjects with exquisite large format camerawork, producing remarkably clinical images which, when grouped together, form fascinating and systematic studies of structure, shape and context.


Firsthand viewing of this work is essential for full disclosure of the sensitive recording made possible by the large negative and the gallery groupings which clarify the synergies of the subjects. The current exhibition Bernd and Hilla Becher: Landscape/Typology at the Museum of Modern Art in NY, organized by chief Curator of Photography Peter Galassi, will conclude on August 25, 2008. MOMAs website does not indicate whether this exhibition will travel to any other parts of the country.

Read the excellent review by Richard Woodward of this exhibition in the Wall Street Journal here.

In addition to the extraordinary body of work produced by the Bechers, Bernd Becher taught photography at the Dusseldorf Art Academy. Bernd Becher died in 2007. He was apparently a very effective and inspiring teacher. Some former students of Bernd are:

Frank Breuer whose series of midwestern signs and stacked cargo containers were recently exhibited at the St. Louis Art Museum, Currents, Jan. 2008

Candida Hofer who specializes in large format images of empty interior spaces (Architecture of Absence, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania)

Thomas Ruff who early on developed a method of conceptual serial photography of interior German living quarters and now explores numerous subject areas simultaneously, characterized by his fascination with the photographic process and digital manipulation

Andreas Gursky whose highly textured and very large images create their own environment. It is one of Gursky's images, "99 Cent II" which currently holds the auction record for the highest price paid for a photograph: $3,346,456.00 at Sotheby's in 2007 (Yep, 3.3 MILLION DOLLARS)