Bernd and 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.

Their first photobook Anonymous Sculptures was published in 1970 and is their most well-known body of work.

In this photobook, they photographed blast furnaces, winding towers, grain silos, cooling towers, and gas tanks. Then they arranged the photos in grids called typologies, as seen above.

Mr. Galassi states, “Each yields photographs full of informative and reliable detail—pictures that might be mistaken for
objective documents, uninflected by sensibility. When they are presented together, however, each strategy betrays the artifice of the other, proving that in photography fact is the agent, not
the enemy, of art.”

In addition to assembling material for their typologies, the Bechers made overall views of
each site. These views generally adopt a high and distant vantage point that permits the viewer to
study the layout of the plant and its relationship to its surroundings.

The couple met in 1957 as they went to the same art school, began working together in 1959 and married in 1961. They would travel the world photographing different industrial plants that intrigued them.

I will go to the waterfront and take symmetrical pictures of different corners of buildings.

This will show both simplicity and complexity, because the simple architecture of most modern tower buildings will contrast with the complex area around them and the complexness of what goes on inside the buildings, e.g. a busy office block. I will also take centred images of the buildings to use for other ideas in this exam

In my exam project, I am intending to take typology style photos of different buildings in Jersey, and present them in categories. For example, industrial buildings, office blocks, apartment blocks and supermarkets. Most of my photographs will be taken in the town of St Helier because it has most buildings. An idea I am looking into at the moment for the presentation is taking photos of the corners of similar style buildings on a tripod like this:

Then I would edit the photos so all the corners line up. Then I will present it as a gallery/gif.