View source for User:10000BL/Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings (2005)

foreword - Gunilla Knape

Bernd and Hilla Beacher are documenting since the beginning of the 1960s industrial buildings whose archtitecture is dicated by their function. Their photographs represent a rich document of cultural and technological history that is vanishing in current industrial era. Their photographs of seemingly unimportant buildings are given the same attention as others do to historically important ancient architecture and new designs. This attention to these industrial buildings evince (tonen aan) an unexpected and controlled beauty where even the smallest detail is being shown/captured. 

The Becher's were resilient to their subject and always kept to it during the course of their career. Their photographs are recognisable by its systematically and scientific precission/approach for the structures,reavling them in a unforgetable/distinctive way. The  buildings have been isolated from its surroundings, all that is superfluous (overbodig) has been taken out. The light is duffuse showing no lights or producing strong shaodws. It is almost like the make a portrait of a single human. Its is a personal fascination. Their way of photographing accentuates the structural similarities and differences in the various built structures, reinforced by their distinctive mode of presentation used since the 1960s with groups of photographs rranged in a grid pattern into typologies. The objects thus become more distinct in character and do not just tempt us into an analysis of the individual structures , but also open our eyes to see and discover these constructions in reality. 


History of style - industrial buildings the photographs of bernd and hilla becher by Susanne Lange

bechers work valt in meerdere cateogorien, het wordt gelinkt aan visual art zoals minimal and conceptual art en in licht van fotografie gelinkt aan namen als Atget, Evans, Blossfeldt en Sander met wie ze de liefde delen voor het documenataire en verhalende kwaliteiten van het medium. It is also linked to the conservation of the history of architecture and enginering. Their choose of topic luidde een nieuwe kijk in esthetiek op, heavy indsutry that vaker geaccocieerd wordt in negatieve zin is nu een object/onderwerp van kunst. industrial buildings as perfect sculptures of a bygone indsutrial area in b&w pictures. they appear as monumental symbols of their own history. The artists intention is not to depict subjective responses but to descrivbe the outside world in the most precise temrs possible. 

the bechers are closely connected to minimal and conceptual art that was first recognized by Carl Andre in an article published in Artforum entitled 'A note on bernhard and Hilla Becher' (1972). It made the connection of bechers work with that of typological focus to the serial methodology and formal analysis of the new avantgarde. 

industrial buildings captured before disappearing. I concentrated entirely on photography vand developing the system of photographing the different parts of a plant separately and putting objects pf the same kind together in typological series. the principle of typlogy was born as a criterion for aaranging and classifying the differnet objects photographed and was finally formulated and perfected from 1959 onwards in cooperation with Hilla Wobeser. she shared the same facination for industrial objects and also brought in phototechnical skills. they married in 1961. 

scientific description and classification of objects according to complexes of characteristics is a method used in comparative morphology to identify analogies and convergence between species as a means of defining genotypes. Bernd and hilla becher see clear parallels with their own apporach in morphology , as they explained in an interview with the athor in 1992: you can apply that method to address any subject really. You could say, for example, that even a blast furnace which was built in the last century and constantly updated and upgraded with pipe systems goes through stages like an insect. In both cases, you can precisely track the developments over time and make comparisons with similar or diffeent versions and variants." system of classification what belongs to who and what group or family. work groups ---> families of objects ---> motifs were grouped according the materials used in their construction. this only was able to do when they had a huge collection in itself.  ---> subspecies and variants. cocnlude systematic apporach and systematich way of working. this enabled them to create grids of 9 or 15 photographs with each typology striks its own chord.