A photographic typology is a body of work that visually explores a theme or subject to draw out similarities and differences for examination. Through the methodical photography and presentation of a specific subject or theme, a typological photographer makes a space that invites a viewer to simultaneously identify both consistencies and distinctions in a series, building up a more nuanced whole.
The typology is a genre built on differences and correlations. Visual classification according to a specific type has historically been applied in sectors ranging from architecture to botany, with carefully laid out illustrations distributed across a page to illuminate key aspects of a subject. As photography developed, so did the execution of photographic typologies – photographers gathered subjects and/or themes in a cohesive presentation deliberately designed for motivating comparisons within similar visual content for identification and insight.
August Sander – The Face of Our Time
August Sander’s father was a mine carpenter and, later, the family ran a small plot of farmland. Sander first discovered photography at the local mine, while helping carry the equipment of a company photographer. His son Gunther said, that looking through a camera ‘transfixed him – and not just for that instant’. He spent his military service (1897–99) as a photographer’s assistant and went on to set up his own photography studio in Cologne in 1909.
In the mid-1920s, Sander began his highly ambitious project ‘People of the 20th Century’. In it, Sander aimed to document Germany by taking portraits of people from all segments of society. 40,000 negatives were destroyed during WWII and in a fire. The project adapted and evolved continuously, falling into seven distinct groups: ‘The Farmer’, ‘The Skilled Tradesman’, ‘The Woman’, ‘Classes and Professions’, ‘The Artists’, ‘The City’ and ‘The Last People’. Sander categorised his portraits according to their profession and social class.
Sander once said ‘The portrait is your mirror. It’s you’. He believed that, through photography, he could reveal the characteristic traits of people. He used these images to tell each person’s story; their profession, politics, social situation and background
Seen together, Sander’s images form a pictorial mosaic of inter-war Germany. Rapid social change and newfound freedom were accompanied by financial insecurity and social and political unrest. By photographing the citizens of the Weimar Republic – from the artistic, bohemian elite to the Nazis and those they persecuted – Sander’s photographs tell of an uncertain cultural landscape. It is a world characterized by explosions of creativity, hyperinflation and political turmoil. The faces of those he photographed show traces of this collective historical experience.
Sander’s methodical, disciplined approach to photographing the world has had an enormous influence on later photographers, notably Bernd and Hilla Becher. This approach can also be seen in the work of their students Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff. Other photographers who have explored this idea include Stephen Shore, Gillian Wearing, Nicholas Nixon, Martina Mullaney and Ari Versluis.
Bernd & Hilla Becher – Typologies of industrial architecture
The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, who began working together in 1959 and married in 1961, are best known for their typologies (grids of black-and-white photographs) of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure. To create these works, the artists travelled to large mines and steel mills, and systematically photographed the major structures, such as the winding towers that haul coal and iron ore to the surface and the blast furnaces that transform the ore into metal. At each site the Bechers also created overall landscape views of the entire plant, which set the structures in their context and show how they relate to each other. The typologies emulate the clarity of an engineer’s drawing, while the landscapes evoke the experience of a particular place. The exhibition presents these two formats together; because they lie at the polar extremes of photographic description, each underscores the creative potential of the other.
For close to fifty years, they documented architectural forms they collectively referred to as “anonymous sculpture.” Their extensive series of water towers, blast furnaces, coal mine tipples, framework houses of mine workers, and other vernacular industrial architecture—often technologies on the verge of obsolescence—comprise an in-depth study of the intricate relationship between form and function. The Bechers produced black and white photographs, using a large-format camera carefully positioned under overcast skies to record shadowless front and side elevation views of their subjects. Arranging these matched photographs in a grid, the Bechers grouped buildings by function, underscoring the similarities and differences between structures.
Bernd Becher studied painting and lithography, and Hilla Wobeser trained as a commercial photographer. The two met in Düsseldorf, and began collaborating, photographing industrial sites Bernd knew from his childhood. The Bechers went on to teach at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where they influenced a generation of photographers including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Struth.