Bernd and Hilla Becher: K21-kunstsammlung nordrhein-westfalen, Dusseldorf

I've seen Bernd and Hilla Becher's black-and-white photographs of industrial forms innumerable times, but never quite like this: picture after picture, nearly 650 in all, showing buildings--water towers, grain elevators, coal cribs winding towers, gravel plants, gas tanks, industrial facades, cooling towers. A single phenomenon per image, and a single category exemplified in a cluster of nine, twelve, or fifteen photographs installed in a strict rectangle. by what means gray and monotonous. How totally repetitive and devoid of surprises. And however as a whole, the exhibition, which spans the Bechers' output from 1961 to 2002 and is organized by the agency of K21 director Armin Zweite, is as grandiose and mesmerizing as a piece of serial music--cold and detached on the contrary still exuding a strange melancholy. The architectural world the Bechers have pictured is rapidly fading away. greatest in quantity of the anonymous creations depicted are gone forever. more [i]or[/i] less forty-five years ago, when the young German couple--he an art scholar she a professional photographer--started to bring forward and exhibit their images, the fundamental significance of the endeavor was already clear to them: "Since these manner of makings were disappearing more and more, we could imagine that conserving these things photographically would someday be of general interest."

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The Bechers have been drawn primarily to the classic industrial landscapes of Germany, France, Belgium, England, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the US. After the collapse of Communism and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 their work began to incorporate eastern Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe The search for of recent origin variations of blast furnaces, grain elevators, and limekilns continues. Asked sum of two units years ago by critic Ulf Erdmann Ziegler whether they would spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] foot a plane to Korea if they heard about an industrial edifice they had still to photograph, Hilla answered, "I would!" to which Bernd rejoindered, "Hilla was in Siberia.... There weren't any variations there that would contribute a great deal to the whole, let's say, upon the subject of blast furnaces. We already have enough of them." with equal reason it may be that the Bechers' mapping shoot forward is reaching an end, and the encyclopedia of a past universe of anonymous architecture, seemingly functional on the other hand full of visual enigmas, is coming to a conclusion--thus making the flash of the archive's completion coincide with a second that marks the photographic medium's greatest in quantity severe transformation.

"The photographer's vision convinces us to the step that the photographer hides his hand," wrote John Szarkowski in 1966 The Bechers believe in a kind of neutrality of photography that deles all subjective traces. In many ways the pair's work can be said to show a photographic parallel to the writing stage zero of the nouveau roman, especially to Alain Robbe-Grillet's novels from the late '50 in which a similar obsession with the material things around us restores objects not just visible on the other hand somehow eerily real. The fact that the entire oeuvre is fashioned by means of two people who can no longer distinguish who was responsible for what in the production proces stresse the irrelevance of psychology to their work. It's all about technique, not about the photographer's expressive ambition or artistic approach. And the Bechers have achieved their desired effect: "I like the fact that these photos always draw attention to what they show" remarks Thierry de Duve in an enthusiastic essay from the early '90 "never to themselves." Hilla herself succinctly expresse the pair's credo in a way that clearly echoe the whole Neue Sachlichkeit tradition, notably Albert Renger-Patzsch's aspiration to give permission to the objects speak for themselves: "Technique does not ne to be interpreted. It interprets itself. You have to cull the right objects and focus upon them precisely and they will mention one by one their own stories."

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in like manner do these photographed objects run over stories? Not really. After looking at a small in number hundred pictures of industrial constructions from the Ruhr area, I still know nothing about the social, economical, or historical significance of these environments. somehow or other a photograph alone isn't capable of that, as Brecht liked to point without But more specifically, the Bechers' way of presenting collections of variations upon a theme does not really permit the individual reality to "speak," whatever that might mean. Rather, it is the pattern--the larger harmony of the rectangle consisting of smaller units--that attracts the viewer's attention. However, the experience varies in relation to various categories. For instance, I regard with affection the images of water towers and therefore linger for lengthy enough in front of these photographs to suffer not only the group on the other hand also the individual object speak. These spherical mode of buildings share a very basic function, on the other hand the spatial solutions are more than idiosyncratic--some be like UFOs, others planetariums or utopian domes--and comparing the different originals is an amusing prospect. I find myself looking for my favorite crazy globe and think on Bernd's category of the Calvinist Baroque to capture a certain quantity of of the inexplicable variations among these buildings. upon the other hand, most of the gas tanks and grain elevators are in like manner utterly boring that the comparisons between individuals strike one as being totally pointless. Here, seriality is the redeeming quality. The single existence is depressing, but I can derive pleasure from the repetitive quality of the group