Reputations Hilla Becher

摘要

A grid of strange creatures is pinned to the wall, each one similar and yet dissimilar to its neighbours. The typological arrangement encourages us to study them dispassionately, almost scientifically, but it also reveals their aesthetic plenitude. They are as beautiful as butterflies in an entomologist's case - as beautiful and as dead, for these pit heads, cooling towers and blast furnaces are worked by no miners or engineers. No smoke rises from these chimneys, and the factory windows are blank or broken. This is the world of the Bechers - our world. Hilla Becher (opposite) recently died aged 81. She was one of the most influential photographers in the world, especially in the field of architecture. Prom around 1960 she and her husband Bernd produced an unrivalled body of work documenting the industrial architecture of the West, just as it began to disappear. The couple also trained a generation of famous photographers at the Duesseldorf Kunstakademie, including Andreas Ghirsky, Candida Hoefer, Thomas Strath and Thomas Ruff. They had an enormous impact on their students: Struth described Hilla as 'uncompromising but open-minded and gentle … always curious, not sentimental but loving'. Through their own work, and that of their so-called Duesseldorf School, it would not be an exaggeration to say they changed the way we see the world.