BERND & HILLA BECHER

Bernd Becher (*1931; +2007) and Hilla Becher (*1934) are an photographer couple from Germany.

They are really famous for their black&white photographs of framework houses and industrial buildings like watertowers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, winding towers etcetera.
Both oft them studied at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf from 1957 to 1961.
There they get to know each other and began to work together.

Bernd and Hilla Becher are two of the most influential visual artists of our time.
Since the beginning of the 1960s together they have documented industrial buildings all over the world  with unparalleled systematicness. This passion has resulted photographs that are documents of cultural and technological history from a vanishing industrial era.

The most interesting thing for the Bechers is the fact, that the architecture of these industrial buildings is totally dictated by the function.  
Once Hilla Becher said it is like "sacred architecture of technique".

For the Bechers it is also very interesting, how different the buildings are in different countries.
The buildings have got many small details and that is what the Bechers want to show with  their also very detailed and precise photographs.

Their famous work should not have any social critic, only the documentary work is important for them.

It's all about the different basic forms of these industrial buildings.
That is also the reason, why the Bechers decided to take only black&white photos.
Something like for example a blue sky would only distract.
The best conditions for there photographs were diffused light, as little shadow as possible an no bright sun.

To describe the great work of the Bechers maybe these words of Paul Klee would be right ones: "Art does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible".