Who is Hilla Becher?

Who is Hilla Becher?

Hilla Becher was a German artist born in 1931 in Siegen, Germany. She was one half of a photography duo with her husband Bernd Becher. For forty years, they photographed disappearing industrial architecture around Europe and North America.

Why did Bernd and Hilla Becher displayed their photographs in grids?

To further encourage close examination and active comparison of structural features, they exhibited their photographs of similar types of structures in grids, creating “families of objects.” They called those ordered sets of photographs “typologies.” The Bechers were interested not only in form but also in function.

What did Bernd and Hilla Becher create?

They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures, often organised in grids. As the founders of what has come to be known as the ‘Becher school’ or the ‘Düsseldorf School’ they influenced generations of documentary photographers and artists.

What camera did Bernd and Hilla Becher use?

view camera
Together, the Bechers went out with a large 8 x 10-inch view camera and photographed these buildings from a number of different angles, but always with a straightforward “objective” point of view. They shot only on overcast days, so as to avoid shadows, and early in the morning during the seasons of spring and fall.

What does Becher mean in English?

noun. beaker [noun] a large drinking-glass or mug.

What are typologies in photography?

A photographic typology is a single photograph or more commonly a body of photographic work, that shares a high level of consistency. This consistency is usually found within the subjects, environment, photographic process, and presentation or direction of the subject.

What is photographic typology?

Why are the Bechers important?

Bernd Becher foresaw that the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957 would transform industrial landscapes and he began sketching the Siegerland area and taking photographs to use as a basis for linocuts and lithographs around this point, due to the speed with which buildings were being demolished.

What is a Becher?

What is topology photography?

New topographics was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.