Bernd and Hilla Becher

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Bernd and Hilla Becher ( Erasmus Prize 2002)

Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (born August 20, 1931 in Siegen ; † June 22, 2007 in Rostock ) and Hilla Becher , b. Wobeser, (born September 2, 1934 in Potsdam ; † October 10, 2015 in Düsseldorf ), acquired as an artist couple with their black and white photographs of half-timbered houses and industrial buildings (such as winding towers, blast furnaces, coal bunkers, factory halls, gasometers, grain silos and complex industrial landscapes ) International reputation as a photographer. They founded the well-known Düsseldorf Photo School. After the death of Bernd Becher, Hilla Becher continued her photographic work with new works.

Career

Bernd Becher came from a family of craftsmen in Siegen. His father owned a decorative painting business, in which the son completed an apprenticeship from 1947 to 1950. After a subsequent stay in Italy, he studied graphic design with Karl Rössing from 1953 to 1956 at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart . In 1959 he moved to the Düsseldorf Art Academy , where he studied typography until 1961 . Bernd Becher had already started to draw and paint industrial monuments before his studies . At the same time, he collected contact sheets from industrial buildings. From 1957 he took photographs for documentation and as a template for drawings and paintings. Using collages of photographs and drawings, he and Hilla later came across purely photographic documentation. Bernd Becher and Hilla Wobeser met in 1957 in an advertising agency in Düsseldorf. They married in 1961.

Hilla Becher in December 2013

Hilla Becher came from a middle-class family from Potsdam. She started taking photos as a child. She was supported by her mother, who had herself trained as a photographer in the Lette Association . From 1951 Hilla completed a three-year training course in the renowned photo studio of Walter Eichgrün (1887–1957). Eichgrün had taken over the business from his father, the court photographer Ernst Eichgrün (1858–1925). The studio, founded in 1890, was considered an institution in Potsdam. It not only did the usual portrait jobs, but was also busy documenting the historical palace complex and the Potsdam cityscape in the early 1950s. “Among other things, Hilla Becher took over the assistance with the photographs of the palaces and gardens of Sanssouci . During this early work she gained a feeling for the extensive photographic exploration of architecture and sculpture in the relevant landscape, which was beneficial for her future work ”. August Sander called them influential for their development . In 1954 she moved to Hamburg, where she worked as a photographer for an aerial photography company. In 1957 she found a job in Hubert Troost's advertising agency ("Persil 59 - the best Persil that ever existed") in Düsseldorf, where she met not only her future husband, but also her future professor Walter Breker . In 1958 she applied to the Düsseldorf Art Academy with a portfolio of photographic works and was accepted. Together with Bernd Becher, she attended the commercial graphics courses with Walter Breker, who enabled her to set up the first photo workshop in the academy. From then on, the academy not only offered classes for painting technique, printmaking and wood or metalworking, but the students were also able to familiarize themselves with the medium of photography .

Bernd Becher took over a professorship for photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1976 , but the couple saw themselves as teaching and cooperated closely in training students. They trained many photographic personalities who, as the “Becher School”, are outstanding representatives of German photography from an international perspective. These include Andreas Gursky , Thomas Struth , Candida Höfer , Thomas Ruff , Jörg Sasse , Axel Hütte , Elger Esser , Götz Diergarten , Petra Wunderlich and Tata Ronkholz .

The Bechers' participation in documenta 5 in 1972 was central to the perception of the work . They exhibited a series of industrial buildings in black and white that were to shape their future photos. Ileana Sonnabend discovered Becher's work for the USA and set up her first exhibition in her New York gallery in 1973. In 1973, photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher were presented in Paris . In 1984 the Bechers were represented in the exhibition " From Here - Two Months of New German Art in Düsseldorf ", curated by Kasper König , exclusively with a catalog contribution. At that time, “pure” photography was rarely found in German contemporary art, but this changed a few years later with the increased presence of the “Becher students” in gallery and museum exhibitions.

In addition to their photographic work, Bernd and Hilla Becher were also known for their work against the demolition of the Zollern II colliery in Dortmund . They gave an impetus for a different relationship to industrial buildings, when these were not yet understood as monuments of industrial culture and the declaration of shaft and blast furnace systems as part of the world cultural heritage seemed hardly imaginable. Building on this, the Becher student Martin Rosswog documented the life and work of the miners on Zollern II / IV in 1985/1987.

After both of them had their studio in the Einbrunger Mühle in the north of Düsseldorf for many years, at the beginning of the 21st century they relocated their apartment and studio to a former school in the center of Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth that had been converted into the Kaiserswerth art archive . In 2007 Bernd Becher died at the age of 75 during a difficult operation in a Rostock hospital. Hilla Becher died on October 10, 2015 after a severe stroke in a Düsseldorf hospital.

plant

Bernd and Hilla Becher started their joint photographic practice during their studies. They pursued the goal of documenting industrial buildings that were typical of the period in which they were built and in many cases threatened with demolition. With the exception of their documentation of half-timbered buildings in Siegerland , they were always concerned with industrial production facilities and those industrial buildings that were related to the production of goods. Characteristic for their approach are often "unwindings", six, nine, twelve or more photographs of the same object at fixed, differing angles. This created “typologies” of industrial buildings.

Permanent installation of a picture frieze with water towers at the power station in the Duisburg-Nord landscape park , in May 2004

The photographs were designed to be factual. In their recording technique, Bernd and Hilla Becher preferred central perspectives, freedom from distortion, deserted people and cloudy, soft sunlight. To ensure that details are reproduced precisely, they used large format cameras measuring 13 × 18 cm. The composition of the pictures allows the surface structures and the structure of the buildings, which are generally placed in the middle, to stand out.

In their style, Bernd and Hilla Becher documented half-timbered houses in the Siegerland, industrial plants in the Ruhr area , the Netherlands , Belgium , France (especially Lorraine ), Great Britain (especially Wales ) and the USA , but also water towers and gas tanks . In view of the steel and coal crises of the 1970s and 1980s, they photographed many structures that shortly thereafter disappeared forever. In this way, with her work, a unique collection of industrial buildings was created in their diversity, as only a few individual examples have survived. Bernd and Hilla Becher coined the term "nomadic architecture" for industrial architecture, as the construction and demolition of these buildings follow the interests of capital utilization and profit generation (quote: "Nomadic peoples leave no ruins."). In this sense, the Bechers saw themselves as archaeologists of industrial architecture . Her work was both a search for clues and a cultural anthropology.

The photographic work by Bernd and Hilla Becher is a series concept in the sense of New Objectivity . From the visual arts perspective, it was soon assigned to conceptual art . This resulted in recognition and notoriety far beyond photography. Through joint exhibitions with artists of conceptual art and minimalism , first in the Prospect exhibition in Düsseldorf, the work was artistically recognized and soon internationally recognized. This happened at a time when photography as an artistic medium was not yet recognized, especially in Europe (in contrast to the USA, e.g. with Stephen Shore or William Eggleston ).

Exhibitions

Bernd and Hilla Becher took part in Documenta 5 (1972), Documenta 6 (1977), Documenta 7 (1982) and Documenta 11 (2002) in Kassel . Their works are represented in leading European and American museums and in many private collections.

Awards

Illustrated books

literature

  • Architekturmuseum Basel (ed.): The Prize of the Architekturmuseum Basel 2002: To Bernd and Hilla Becher, Düsseldorf / Candida Höfer, Basler Interieurs. Ulrike Jehle-Schulte Strathaus and Candida Höfer. 2002, AM, Basel 2002, ISBN 3-905065-38-X .
  • Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Anne Gantführer, Virginia Heckert: Comparative Concepts: August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Bernd, Hilla Becher. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-88814-757-3 .
  • Jörn Glasenapp : The winding tower family or: Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographic Neoplatonism. In: Photo history. Vol. 26 (2006), H. 100, pp. 3-8.
  • Antje Kahnt: Düsseldorf's strong women - 30 portraits Droste, Düsseldorf 2016, ISBN 978-3-7700-1577-1 , pp. 151–156.
  • Susanne Lange: Work Chronology. (Period 1957 to 2004; [1] )
  • Susanne Lange: “What we do is ultimately telling stories” ... Bernd and Hilla Becher. Introduction to life and work . Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-8296-0175-1 .
  • Ulf Erdmann Ziegler , Dominik Wichmann : Interview with Bernd & Hilla Becher. Two interviews. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8296-0752-0 . (With 45 illustrations)

Movie

  • Jean-Pierre Krief: Hilla and Bernd Becher / Thomas Struth. Film 2 in the Contact Sheets series . Documentary film series, France, 2002, 30 min. (With off-screen comments by the Bechers and Struths on goal setting and technology. Film based on an idea by William Klein).
  • Marianne Kapfer: You have to hurry, everything disappears - the life and work of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Documentary, Germany / France / England, 2006, 60 min. Direction and production: Marianne Kapfer, camera: Dirk Heuer, editing: Moritz Senarclens de Grancy.
  • Marianne Kapfer: The photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Documentary, 2009, 90 min.

Bernd and Hilla Becher Prize

Since 2020, the city of Düsseldorf has awarded the Bernd and Hilla Becher Prize for a life's work with 15,000 euros and a sponsorship award with 5,000 euros every two years . The first prizes went to Evelyn Richter and Theo Simpson from England.

Web links

Commons : Hilla Becher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Obituaries for the death of Bernd Becher

Individual evidence

  1. Becher was mostly called "Bernhard Becher" until the early 1980s
  2. Photographer Hilla Becher is dead. In: Rheinische Post , October 13, 2015.
  3. Gabriele Conrath-Scholl: Hilla Becher - We congratulate you on your birthday! In: photographie-sk-kultur.de ( PDF ).
  4. ^ Gerhard Matzig : The great amazement. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 17, 2010, accessed July 5, 2010 .
  5. Tobias Becker, Maren Keller, Daniel Sander: The wild thirteen. In: Kulturspiegel , May 26, 2012.
  6. ^ Art archive Kaiserswerth
  7. Hilla and Bernd Becher. Mines and huts ( Memento from December 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) on the Bottrop.de page
  8. Awards - Art: Photographer Hilla Becher receives Rhenish Culture Prize. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . Archived from the original on June 13, 2014 ; Retrieved June 12, 2014 .
  9. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 4, 2020, p. 13.