Bernd and Hilla Becher: United strength for photo art and aesthetics industrial documentation

Without a doubt: the most important photo artists in the world

An absurd statement that the content can only be wrong? Yes, of course, but:

Bernd and Hilla Becher are currently taking place 144 of the art world best list of Art Facts and until a few years ago there were a hundred best artists in the world. They are part of the crème de la crème of the art world, and that has been a very long time.

Everyone who has noticed ​​"art and culture" "art" , knows Bernd and Hilla Becher (even if many younger art enthusiasts no longer know what they did ...). Every artistically active photographer in this world knows Bernd and Hilla Becher, their work and details of their career.

Think of the "almost" and "presumably" and others actually owed to the balance; But that's what it looks like because a good part of the best photographers in the world went through the “Becher School”: Thomas Ruff is a photo artist and No. 12 of the world's best list, the same profession follows Thomas Struth follows in 52, Andreas Gursky is No. 55 and Candida Höfer No. 99.

Among the 100 most outstanding artists in the world concentrate entirely on medium photography, four of which of the "Düsseldorf School" .

The remaining four ( Nan Goldin , Robert Mapplehorpe , Cindy Sherman , Wolfgang Tillmans ) had little chances of visiting Bernd and Hilla Becher "Düsseldorf School" , but in their training certainly had to deal with the special features of the photographic art mediated by Bernd and Hilla Becher.

Not a bad cut; And if the focus is on the international on German photo art, a photo artist who had not gone through Bernd and Hilla Becher's "Brain and Eye": Axel Hütte (No. 958), Jörg Sasse (No. 1144), Boris Becker (No. 1886), Bernhard Fuchs (No. 2385), Simone Nietweg (no. 3883), Elger Esser (No. 5749) and Petra Wunderlich (No. 8691), Laurenz Berges, Volker Döhne, Claus Goedicke, Claudia Fährkemper, Tata Ronkholz-all known German photo artists, all cup students.

Pioneering work for photo art

In it-and not only in the mighty, marveled at the overall work of photographic art that Bernd and Hilla have left cups-is also the real reason that connoisseurs have awe in the voice when it comes to Bernd and Hilla Becher: the two have produced photography art on the ongoing volume.

To a large extent, Bernd and Hilla Becher contributed to the fact that these photographers are considered an artist at all. A very decisive part of them are also responsible for the fact that the art of photography is also classified as art by the German art scientists (and the following media, and the following people in German -speaking countries).

Bernd and Hilla Becher have achieved that photographers are allowed to do art, they have made photography into art. ”

This as part of a development that had parallels in all art centers in the world. But in Germany and the entire German culture, Bernd and Hilla Becher were among the crucial pioneers for the recognition of artistic photography.

Since the end of the 19th century, photographers have been trying that the works they have made can also be regarded as art.

Regardless of whether it is "just the pure photographic illustration" or whether photography played a role as one of several media when creating a work of art.

Of course, the photographers were able to book many successes on the way of recognition of "their art form" because, in all common definitions of the concept of art, photographs can be as good as works of art as performances without movement, two-word poems or fat.

But in the second half of the 20th century one of the most influential sociologists of the time, the Frenchman Pierre Félix Bourdieu (1930 - 2002) described photography as "illegitimate art" ; In 2014, the problem area of ​​"Photography between Art and Documentation" will be examined in a dissertation at the Free University of Berlin.

The art of photography at the main peculiarities of Bernd and Hilla Becher (approx. 1960 to 2000) still urgently needed lighthouse artists and advocates (and today, where the signs are on freedom restriction, it will probably soon need it again).

In order to participate with noticeable influence, to give photography a decisive thrust in the direction of "acceptance as art", Bernd and Hilla Becher had to become influential people and photography artists. In their time a huge project, not unclear to tackle it in pairs:

Bernd and Hilla Bechers Weg to Art

You don't become an artist by yourself, even Bernd and Hilla Becher (although the two of them “become art” in their career quite close). Before Bernd and Hilla Becher became the "Bernd-and Hilla cup" art couple named in a word, who worked with combined forces for photo art, the two were now individuals.

Bernd Becher - via a handicraft apprenticeship for photo art

Bernd Becher is actually called Bernhard Becher, was born on August 20, 1931 in Siegen and had to do with the manual side of art early on: his father was the owner of a company for decorative painting, in which Bernd Becher initially completed an apprenticeship (1947 to 1950); Perhaps with the idea that the craft stays in the family.

After the apprenticeship, Bernd Becher spent some (training?) Time in Italy, in order to study free graphics at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart from 1953, among other things at Karl Rössing. With the Austrian graphic artist and book illustrator Karl Rössing (1897 - 1987) as the teacher, the signs were more on art than on craft:

Rössing had expressed itself in wooden stings (1917 to 1950), linen cuts and wooden panel prints (1950 to approx. 1983), pictures and drawings (1981 to 1987 and again and again in the early days) and despite these sometimes very traditional media, it was one of the advanced contemporaries of the last century. He has z. B. exhibited at the "New Sezession" in Munich, participating in the "International Black and White Exhibition" of the Salzburg Artists' Association "Der Wassermann" from 1921 (together with Ernst Barlach, George Grosz, Alfred Kubin and Käthe Kollwitz). He also participated in the legendary exhibition "New Objectivity" in Mannheim in 1925.

Rössing tends to work surrealistic, with hints to the new objectivity and with the processing of many suggestions from the latest films and literature; His unusually combined works made of apparently strange and mysterious worlds were clearly in the field of art and not to use the use.

Photographic documentation: Modernity industrial monuments

In 1956, Becher graduated from this man as a state -certified free graphic artist and began to draw the first industrial monuments of modernity, e.g. B. the bridges, towers and stairs of the "Grube Eisenhardter Tiefbau" in the Siegerland (start of operation May 11, 1859, operating setting June 30, 1957).

For Bernd Becher, these drawings were the reason to turn to photography: he wanted to fully grasp the industrial wing in all details, but did not have the time for the production of more details because the demolition of the system began - which is why cups exhausted a small picture camera to "at least document the pit in the photo" .

This was the prelude to one of the most famous photo series of the 20th century , accompanied by a life in a area of ​​tension between photography, art and documentation, which has not yet lost its relevance today.

Before it really started, Becher added crucial specialist knowledge of his artistic training: he trained as a typographer (1959 to 1961). This study of the art of designing a printed work included the design and combination of layout, sentence, paper selection, cover, etc. It should have a significant influence on the work that he later developed in cooperation with his wife Hilla.

Hilla Becher - the first camera at the age of 13

Hilla Becher was born on September 2, 1934 in Potsdam as Hildegard Weser. She grew up in a bourgeois family with three siblings. As a child, she had contact with photography about her mother, who was trained as a photographer at the Berlin Lette Association in the 1920s. At the age of 13 she held her first camera in her hand.

That was in 1947, and the Hilla, which was of course predetermined for the Abitur, was to come into contact with professional photography faster than expected: In advanced puberty, she acted a school reference for "rebellious statements" and was able to/had to take three years of training as a photographer in the renowned Potsdam photo studio Walter Eichgrüns (1887–1957).

The son of the Hoffotographer Ernst Eichgrün had just received the order to document the Potsdam cityscape and the historical castle facilities of the Berlin suburb, and trainees Hilla was allowed to assist in the recordings of the castles and gardens of Sanssouci, so it was already employed in her earliest work with the photographic development of architecture and sculpture in the landscape.

The photographic dissection of industrial objects

Her first self-employed order also pretended the later common oeuvre of the cups: In a Reichsbahn identification work, precise recordings with technical details of individual steam locomotive elements were needed in order to be able to repair the damage to the Second World War.

Hilla Becher photographed the larger ones on the depot and the smaller ones in the studio, discovered their talent for the fine perception of materials and their joy in the development of suitable display methods; As a journeyman's examination, she delivered the documentation of a gas plant. the “ photographic dissection” of industrial cheese should determine their lives.

How Hilla and Bernd became Bechers

With 20 fled Hilla cups from the GDR and landed in Hamburg. From 1954 to 1957 she worked there as an independent photograph of a company that made aerial photos on order. In 1957 Hilla Becher moved to the Troost advertising agency in Düsseldorf ( "Persil 59 - The Best Persil ever existed" ), where she met her future husband Bernd Becher and her future professor Walter Breker.

Graphic and typography professor Walter Breker worked in addition to his professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy as a typographer for the advertising agency, his student Bernd Becher worked there to this academy during his studies.

Ordered through these acquaintances, Hilla Becher dared to apply with a application folder at the art academy only consisting of photographs (a novelty that was never previously tolerated). It was accepted in 1958. She attended the City Counties courses at Walter Breker, who was appointed professor and head of the City County in 1954 at the age of 50 at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. This was the highlight of his career and his last office, which he exercised until his retirement in 1969.

With the experienced graphic artist and typographer Breker, who, in addition to (also previous) teaching, had always been arrested with a leg in practical exercise and who was involved in national and international and international associations (Federation of German Graphicians, Alliance Graphique Internationale), the self-confident prospective artist had done a gold handle: He promoted her enthusiasm for photography so far that Hilla Bitch Not only the first photo workshop was able to set up in the academy, but also the medium of photography in addition to painting technology, printing graphics, wood or metal processing to the general range of teaching for all students.

Bernd Becher also heard at Breker and, like Hilla Becher, was enthusiastic about the brittle charm of the useless use of modernity . This met in a degree in the use of use of the use of use of two people with passion for the (then not yet existent) artistic industrial photography , of which one is just initiating the expansion of training by medium photography-a probability that can be compared, for example, that two entomologists with passion for cryptocephalus serice , small green silky fall beetles, at a course of correct preparation of insects together The breeding and research station for small, silky case beetles set up by one of the two set up by one of the preparation course ...

Bernd and Hilla Becher are similar: They used the photo workshop set up by Hilla in the academy for their more and more work together and also married in 1961. Even if it was mainly Hilla who, in addition to her own work with her husband with her well -founded expertise on camera technology and handling, establishment and operation of dark chambers, helped a wide variety of student projects to implement, her husband Bernd received the teaching position in 1976 and thus became the first official owner of the first professorship for photography at the Düsseldorf Art Akademie.

But Hilla was also lucky with the man: Bernd Becher officially headed the photography class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy until 1996, but was obviously able to resist the temptation, in addition to the professorship (which would actually have been due to Hilla, Bernd Becher was also more draftsman in the heart as a photographer until his heart); He is said to have not even tried the mechanisms that are common in the art business. That would probably have led to divorce at some point rather than over four decades of extremely fruitful cooperation.

The cup school

Which would have been a shame at first, because then the famous cup school , from which a long series of very successful photo artists emerged until the end of the Becher teaching in 1996. Hilla Becher was a central and equal part of this school. Even without a teaching position in the institutional sense, her studio was always open to the students, her judgment was just as popular as that of her husband.

Every disturbance of the long and fertile cooperation of the 'aesthetics born to document the' aesthetics of industrial aesthetics would also have been a loss for photo art, because the two also left us a few century works, which in the article "Bernd and Hilla Becher: Foto Art and Photo Artists from a success duo" are thrown closely.

Forming methodology and artistic characteristics

Forming for their methodological approach are often so -called "processing" , in which six, nine, twelve or more photographs of the same object are taken from defined, different perspectives. "typologies" emerged .

The photographs were created with a clear, factual approach. When choosing their recording technology, Bernd and Hilla cups preferred central perspectives without distortions , chose deserted scenes and relied on a gentle, cloudy light. In order to present fine details precisely, they used large format cameras in the 13 × 18 cm format.

The image composition clearly emphasizes the surface structures and the arrangement of the generally centrally positioned structures.

The systematically captured evidence of industrial development, which is now damaged in many places, are recorded factually and precisely in black and white photographs. In typological compilations, the viewer can make these pictures act simultaneously.

In addition to the documentary and analytical dimension of this long -term project, the work also had an impact on minimalism and concept art since the early 1970s. This is due to the targeted placement of the buildings in front of a neutral gray sky, their decoupling of functional contexts and the monumental individual position, as well as the grid of the typological representation.

Her photographs reveal a lost iconography that lets us immerse yourself in a world that is rarely found today. With their impressive work, Bernd and Hilla Becher left us a unique collection of industrial buildings, the diversity of which has hardly been handed down in modern architecture.

They shaped the concept of "nomadic architecture" for industrial architecture, which describes the fleeting nature of these structures. The construction and demolition of these buildings are subject to the imperative interests of capital utilization and maximization of profits - a thoughts that manifests itself in the quote:

Nomadic peoples do not leave ruins. "

In this context, the Bechers saw themselves as archaeologists in the industrial architecture; Their activity was both a documentary search for traces and a cultural anthropology.

Classification of the artistic heritage

The photographic work of Hilla and Bernd Becher, which has played a central role in formal aesthetic discussions since the 1960s, is indispensable for modern art history in the field of photography. Your approach to photography is based on the vocabulary of the visible and industrial architecture.

Through a sober and factual visual language, the Bechers justified a new tradition of documentary photography, which is in contrast to heavily staged works. In teaching projects , pupils still develop the basic design tools of the cups, followed by practical tasks in style typological photography.

The photographic work of Bernd and Hilla Becher follows a concept that is anchored new objectivity From the perspective of the visual art, it was soon assigned to concept art . However, the viewer not only opens up their unique approach to the viewer of the past of the past, but also invites you to think about the influence of economic structures on the architectural inheritance.

Your work is therefore not only documentation, but also important contributions to reflection About us the environment built.

Joachim Rodriguez y Romero

Owner and managing director of Kunstplaza . Publicist, editor and passionate blogger in the field of art, design and creativity since 2011. Successful conclusion in web design as part of a university degree (2008). Further development of creativity techniques through courses in free drawing, expression painting and theatre/acting. Profound knowledge of the art market through many years of journalistic research and numerous collaborations with actors/institutions from art and culture.

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