Bernd and Hilla Becher were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their series of photographic images, (or typologies,) of industrial buildings and structures, often organised in grids. They influenced many documentary photographers and artists.

Bernd Becher was born in Siegen. He studied painting in Germany from 1953-1956, then typography (the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed) from 1959-1961. Hilla Becher was born in Potsdam. After Hilla’s time studying photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1958-1961, she had completed an apprenticeship as a photographer in her place of birth. They both began working as freelance photographers (self-employed) for the Troost Advertising Agency in Düsseldorf, concentrating on product photography (advertising or commercial photography). The couple married in 1961. Bernd and Hilla Becher first collaborated on photographing and documenting the disappearing German industrial architecture in 1959. The Ruhr Valley, (where Becher’s family had worked in the steel and mining industries,) was their main focus. They were fascinated by the similar shapes in which the buildings were designed. After capturing thousands of pictures of individual structures, they noticed that the various large buildings, (of cooling towers, gas tanks and coal bunkers, for instance,) shared many distinctive formal qualities. In addition to this, they were intrigued by the fact that so many of these industrial buildings seemed to have been built with a great deal of attention towards its design. Together, the Bechers went out with a large 8 x 10-inch view camera and photographed these buildings from a straightforward “objective” point of view. They only did their shoots on overcast days, (to avoid shadows,) and early in the morning during spring and autumn. Objects included barns, water towers, coal tipples, cooling towers, grain elevators, coal bunkers, coke ovens, oil refineries, blast furnaces, gas tanks, storage silos, and warehouses.

This typology created by the Becher’s shows their objectives of conceptual art. They wanted to create a series of images where every object showed similar characteristics. These images were taken in Germany, as their images were based around the German industrial architectures. Each image is similar to the other, because of the repeated lines of wood that are used as part of each houses construction. This repetition effect is something that intrigues me towards these series of images. I like how each house has a triangular rooftop – the houses are a classic shape and although they seem like original shaped houses, they all have their own speciality that differentiates them from each other. For example, on the bottom row, second image from the right, this house appears to have 5 rectangular windows with a variance in how the panels for the window are displayed. The white panels all determine how many small squares there are inside of the window – some windows have 6 small squares, some only have 2 squares and 2 long rectangles. This same house has 1 door that has 2 slight windows either side of the door. This house is very different to the houses around it on the grid format, that the Becher’s used to create their typology. However, they all have similar shapes and objects that create the houses.

John Baldessari was a leading Californian conceptual artist. Painting was important to his early work, but by the end of the decade he had begun to introduce text and pre-existing images to create riddles that highlighted some of the unspoken assumptions of contemporary painting. In the 1970’s, he abandoned his interest in painting and began to make a diverse range of media, though his interests were based on the photographic image. Conceptual art has shaped his interest in exploring how photographic images communicate. However, he works with light humor and materials and motifs that reflect the influence of pop art. He works with pre-existing images, arranging them in a way to suggest a narrative. He seems to distort his images – from cropping the images, to collaging them with unrelated images, to blocking out faces and objects with colored dots; this all forces us to ask how and what the image is communicating.

The image above is part of Baldessari’s approach to conceptual art during the 1970’s. This photo is of 6 people who seem to be dressed smart and professional. The image portrays normality, as it is a simple image of 5 men and 1 women that are staring out the window. Baldessari liked to incorporate into various features into his work, such as leaving us with questions about what the image is communicating and showing or trying to tell us. This aspect of the photo, where all the models seem to all be bunched near the slanted window creates this sense of uncertainty and leaves us wondering what are they all so attached on looking at? What is so interesting about what they can possibly see out the window? Additionally, Baldessari was interested in using parts of pop art in his work, as well as collaging his images with unrelated art or other images to block out objects or faces (as he has done in the image above). He has made these models faces invisible – so we don’t know what they look like, what their facial expressions are displaying, if they are talking with each other or where they are looking. Instead, he has used coloured dots to cover their faces which is similar to aspects of pop art, such as artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol., who use small coloured dots to make up their images. Again, this makes the us as an audience of his work, consider all these different factors that he his hiding from us. This is what makes his art and photographic images so intriguing, and why I was influenced to do something on a similar level to Baldessari.

DEFINITION = Conceptual art is art where the idea (or concept) behind the work is more important than the finished art product/object.

It emerged as an art movement in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and this has greater importance that the artists final outcomes. Conceptual art can be anything – the overall visual aspects of conceptual art may be confusing, misleading or it could be boring or interesting. The reason that it became an art movement is because of its intriguing features – many people look at conceptual art and wonder why an artist has displayed something in this form. There are many artists that had made conceptual art, but it was only defined as a distinct movement in an article written by Sol LeWitt in 1967. The link attached shows many of the artists that have formed conceptual art, and many of their exhibitions. Some of these are Bruce Nauman, Martin Creed, John Baldessari and Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher. They all take approaches to this that have influenced many other artists and artworks. For example, Bernd and Hilla Becher focus their work on typologies.