Hilla Becher - Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur

Hilla Becher, opening of the exhibiiton „Blast Furnaces“, 19.9.2013,
Photo: Niklas Rausch for Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln
Hilla Becher – a great and unforgettable woman and an astute photographer
Hilla Becher quietly passed away in Düsseldorf on the 10th of October at the age of 81
following a stroke.
She was a clever and exemplary photographer. Her clear and logical viewpoint was
unsurpassed and we will miss her intuitive spot-on judgment, her open-mindedness, and her
invariably positive, life-affirming attitude. She leaves behind an enormous body of photographic
work, which she consistently developed over the span of fifty years in collaboration with her
husband, Bernd Becher, who died in 2007. With their typological and conceptual industrial images,
the couple and artistic duo revolutionized both photography and art and made a lasting impact on
subsequent generations. No respectable history of photography would think of omitting the work of
Bernd and Hilla Becher. They succeeded in drawing widespread attention both on the art scene
and beyond to the exceptional aesthetic qualities of the built structures of heavy industry. Winding
towers, water towers, cooling towers and gas tanks caused an international sensation in their
hands. Thanks to Bernd and Hilla Becher – in the order of attribution they were just as
unpretentious as in other matters in life – documentary photography achieved a high degree of
recognition as a means of artistic expression. Their photographs, which they usually arranged in
series as so-called typologies or Abwicklungen (a sequence of views of the object from different
perspectives), can be found in major collections and museums all over the world. They
bequeathed to us numerous monographs, and the list of their solo and group exhibitions is virtually
endless.
Most of the buildings that Bernd and Hilla Becher documented so minutely in their
photographs are in the meantime history. Though preserved in finely composed black-and-white
images, they have largely been consigned to the past. Both artists regarded this situation with a
heavy heart, but as an irrefutable fact: photography always allows us to look back, it transports the
present to another point in time – and there is no reason to grieve or wax sentimental about it. Hilla
Becher will not be forgotten. Her alert analytical gaze will be kept alive for posterity in thousands of
photographic images.
For the past twenty years, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur has enjoyed a close
and extremely productive collaboration and friendship with Hilla Becher. In 1995 the institution
began working with her and her husband, Bernd Becher, to conserve and inventorize a major
portion of the Becher archive. The results of these efforts have since been presented in numerous
exhibitions and publications, beginning in 1997 with “Comparative Concepts: Photographs by
August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Bernd and Hilla Becher,” and
continuing with “Coal Mines: Object and Description” in 1999, “Zeche Zollern 2” in 2003, “Zeche
Concordia” (with publication) in 2006, “Zeche Hannover” (with publication) in 2010, a large group of
works featured in “New Topographics" in 2011, concurrently with “Grube Anna” as A Look at the
Collection, and “Blast Furnaces” (with publication) in 2013/14.
In the course of this working relationship, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung
Kultur has become a focal point for managing, researching and disseminating the work of Bernd
and Hilla Becher. We came to know and esteem Bernd and Hilla Becher as outstanding
personalities and artists, and both will always serve as very special role models for our endeavors.
They were instrumental to the founding and orientation of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK
Stiftung Kultur.
A life in review
Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (b. September 2, 1934, in Potsdam) already felt a magnetic attraction
to photography as a child. She took her first pictures at the age of 13, and with her enterprising
spirit she had already gathered a great deal of photographic experience before meeting the likeminded Bernd Becher in the late 1950s. In 1951 she embarked on a three-year course of training
in the studio of photographer Walter Eichgrün in her hometown of Potsdam, focusing both on
portraiture and the documentation of the historic cityscape. Hilla Becher assisted during this period
in projects such as photographing the palaces and gardens of Sanssouci.
After moving to Hamburg in 1954 at the age of 20, she worked there as a freelance
photographer for an aerial photography company. In 1957 she got a job at an advertising agency in
Düsseldorf, where she met Bernd Becher, who was working there part-time during his studies at
the Düsseldorf Art Academy. The following year, Hilla Becher was also accepted at the Academy.
Together with Bernd Becher, whom she married in 1961, she attended the class taught by the
graphic designer Walter Breker and also set up the Academy’s first photography workshop. With
her in-depth expertise in handling camera and darkroom equipment, she helped many students to
realize their projects. This represented a significant advance in the training offered by the traditionsteeped institution, because the young generation was henceforth able to avail itself of a workshop
for photography alongside those for painting techniques, prints, and wood- and metalworking.
It would still take until 1976, however, for the first professor of photography to be appointed,
in the person of Bernd Becher. He taught the class until 1996, launching a long series of artists on
extremely successful careers. Although Hilla Becher had no teaching responsibilities at the
academy, her studio was always open to students and her judgment was valued every bit as highly
as that of her husband.
While still studying, the artist couple executed their first joint work in the Siegerland and
Ruhr areas. This was the starting point for a complex documentation of industrial plants in the
international arena consisting of photographic works in which winding towers, blast furnaces, water
towers, factories, gas tanks, cooling towers, grain silos and lime kilns play a major role and are
singled out as protagonists in their own right alongside landscapes, views of entire plants, and
individual details.
And yet the two were not fascinated merely by the isolated image or the single monumental
object as a found form, portrayed if feasible from different angles, i.e., from the side, frontally or in
a three-quarter view. Instead, they sought to embed these images whenever possible in a more
complex overview that would embody their interest in comparative observation, in collecting and
cataloguing these imposing structures. These efforts gave rise to their so-called typologies:
collections of images showing objects of the same type and similar construction, consisting of
perhaps nine, twelve or fifteen photographs. This was the most vivid way to convey the respective
specific or shared features of the related objects.
In addition, Bernd and Hilla Becher also created series of images they referred to as
Abwicklungen, or (a sequence of views of the object from different perspectives). They show for
example a certain type of structure, such as a building or a section of landscape complete with an
industrial plant, from different angles, so that its individual functional and structural elements,
technological advances and time layers can be read in detail. This procedure was geared toward
making their overall body of work into a kind of visual grammar, applying a methodology aspiring to
encyclopedic scientific archiving.
As a way of visualizing this concept, Hilla Becher compared the procedure early on with
biological illustrations like the ones found in aesthetically appealing wall charts or book plates,
which are used to provide a systematic overview of evolutionary relationships and typological
differences based on the characteristics of specific living creatures and their variations. Hilla
Becher had amassed a whole collection of books featuring such illustrations. Natural science
textbooks were particularly useful for her purposes, but she was also interested in popular science
as published for example in children’s books, where facts are presented using pictures and which
therefore display their own individual style of depiction. During her stint as visiting professor at the
University of Fine Arts in Hamburg (HFBK) in 1971/72, she used these printed works as part of her
teaching material to demonstrate various, and above all scientific, methods of visual
representation.
Becher’s approach to photography was still completely new in the 1960s and 70s, especially in
Germany and in Europe, and she had to blaze a trail through many prejudices: not enough color,
not enough social significance, not enough people depicted, not experimental enough, not artistic
enough. These many “not enoughs” were however gradually eclipsed by a growing acceptance of
her work, for example by devotees of Minimal and Conceptual Art. Becher’s 1970 publication
Anonymous Sculptures: A Typology of Technical Buildings met with great acclaim in art circles. It
was preceded in 1969 by an exhibition with an almost identical title at the Städtische Kunsthalle
Düsseldorf, curated by Karl Ruhrberg, and by a show called “Comparisons between Technical
Constructions” at the Galerie Konrad Fischer. The Bechers also first met Ileana Sonnabend during
this period, who henceforth represented their photographic work at her gallery in Paris, and then in
New York, and with whom the artist couple felt a kind of intellectual kinship.
Anonymous Sculptures, which is regarded today as among the most programmatically
valuable books in the history of photography, was followed by another 20 or so publications, most
of them artist books on individual types of industrial structure or entire plants. The couple’s books
usually focus on a systematically conceived series of full-page plates. These are preceded by an
almost lexical functional description written by Hilla Becher, in which she explains the illustrated
purpose-built structures in a way that is just as pragmatic and lucid as the photographic images
themselves. From 2008 onward, Hilla Becher had to continue developing her publications and
exhibitions without Bernd Becher. He died in the summer of 2007, at the age of 75.
And yet the joint body of work the two created over a span of more than 50 years speaks
for itself. What’s more, the proven close collaboration between the two artists allowed for an almost
seamless continuation by only one partner. This should not however detract from the fact that the
dialogue, the synergy between them provided a special impetus in their trusting working
relationship. Working together simply gave them great joy; they could consult with each other and
pursue their interests with doubled drive. After her husband’s death, Hilla Becher continued to
pursue her projects in the usual systematic way, focusing especially on work complexes and
negatives in the archive that still required a more finely differentiated evaluation. Constantly on the
road photographing and then working on the associated book and exhibition projects, the artists
had after all not been able to realize all their plans in the many intended facets.
Traveling to often inhospitable industrial zones far off the beaten track and bereft of any
tourist amenities in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and the USA, as well
as in various areas of Germany, was one of Hilla Becher’s greatest pleasures in connection with
her work. These working trips were actually journeys of discovery like those we otherwise
associate with naturalists undertaking expeditions into unknown realms. For weeks on end, the
couple’s Volkswagen bus served as their studio and home away from home, and their son Max (b.
1964) still associates it with many fond childhood memories. His parents’ unusual working routine
was a formative experience for him; today he lives in the USA with his wife and two sons and
works as an artist and photographer.
Together, the Bechers chased down the winds of time, even vying with them in some
cases. At the beginning of their careers, for example when they worked in England, Wales and
France in 1966, heavy industry was still largely thriving. Nevertheless, Bernd Becher had already
picked up signs of its decline in the 1950s in his homeland in the Siegerland region, so that the
couple worked more and more in the certainty that their project of documenting operational
industrial plants and structures was a race with time.
Some time ago, Hilla Becher expressed this presentiment in the following words: “What we
were interested in were the visual and the sculptural aspects of the structures. And because these
types of purpose-built structure can’t be preserved forever, we wanted to at least hold them fast in
pictures, and so we began to collect them. Photography basically means nothing more than
collecting. What always fascinated me personally is steel - its beautiful matte sheen, which can be
captured especially well in black-and-white. I find steel and iron ornament especially appealing, like
that adorning the Eiffel Tower or the Grand Palais in Paris, where the structures are riveted
together. Or the cast iron architecture of the 19th century, the cast iron columns in New York
houses – this should really be catalogued and illustrated in connection with the history of
architecture.”
Hilla Becher and her husband received many prestigious awards and honors. In 1990 they
were awarded the Golden Lion for sculpture at the 44th Venice Biennale. In 1994 they were
presented with the Kaiserring (Emperor’s Ring) of the City of Goslar, in 2001 the State Award of
North Rhine-Westphalia, in 2002 the Erasmus Award in Amsterdam, and in 2004 the Hasselblad
Foundation International Award in Photography in Gothenburg, Sweden. After the impressive
retrospective of their work that began its tour through prominent German and European museums
at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, the Museum of Modern Art in New York
mounted an extensive exhibition in 2008, following the death of Bernd Becher. The Rheinischer
Kulturpreis presented in August 2014 to Hilla Becher represents a special honor for her work in
particular and expresses great respect for a cosmopolitan and dynamic woman who from a young
age drove forward the emancipation of photography in an exceptional way, who devoted herself to
it and who in the course of her daily life, almost in passing, created a new image of womanhood in
which partnership, profession and independence all intertwine as a matter of course – and even
rely on each other for success.
Gabriele Conrath-Scholl
(Translation: Jennifer Taylor)
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Im Mediapark 7, 50670 Köln,
www.photographie-sk-kultur.de, photographie@sk-kultur.de, Tel.: 0049 221/88895300