55
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Kühltürme (Cooling Towers)
- Estimate
- £30,000 - 40,000♠
Lot Details
Three gelatin silver prints.
1963-1967
Each approximately 40 x 30 cm (15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.)
Each signed and dated in ink by Bernd Becher on the recto; copyright credit stamp on the verso.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
Left to right:
(i) Herne, Germany, 1965
(ii) Essen, Germany, 1963
(iii) Montceau-les-Mines, France, 1967
‘All we did was to turn back the time to a photography of precision which is superior to the human eye.’
Bernd Becher
(i) Herne, Germany, 1965
(ii) Essen, Germany, 1963
(iii) Montceau-les-Mines, France, 1967
‘All we did was to turn back the time to a photography of precision which is superior to the human eye.’
Bernd Becher
Provenance
Literature
Bernd and Hilla Becher
GermanHusband and wife Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing buildings and relics of the Industrial Revolution, such as coal mines and cooling towers, in 1959. Like objective scientists removing a specimen from the field, the Bechers framed their subject in a manner that isolated it from its environment. Often, these stark, beautifully detailed prints were then displayed in grid-like structures, forming stunning 'Typologies'.By the time Bernd Becher became a professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1976 (policy would not allow Hilla to be a simultaneous appointment), the Bechers' photographs, with their seemingly neutral point of view and serial display, were already being applauded by the international art world as important works of Minimal and Conceptual Art.
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