Books Collaboration Exhibition Photography

Bernd & Hilla Becher: Photographic Typologies

posted by Tessa Lawer January 4, 2015

I came across the photographic work of couple Bernd and Hilla Becher within the Barbican’s exhibition, “Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age”. The Becher’s typologies of banal buildings and structures aim to document the physical leftovers of disappearing industries.

The individual images within each composition have been cropped to isolate the subjects from their assumed context, stripping away the surrounding architectural chaos. This “cutting-out”, combined with unflattering skies and gridded layouts give the images a quasi-scientific appeal. Although we can see that the shapes within each structure have been dictated by function, we are also able to enjoy the forms as aesthetic objects alone.