Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work [Hardcover]

Susanne Lange (Author), Jeremy Gaines (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2006

Bernd and Hilla Becher's lifetime project of documenting the industrial landscape of our time secures their position in the canon of postwar photographers. Their work--at once conceptual art, typological study, and topological documentation--has influenced German photographers of a younger generation, including Thomas Struth, Thomas Demand, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, and Andreas Gursky. This compelling, exhaustively documented biography describes the Bechers' life and work and offers a critical assessment of their place in the history of photography.Becher scholar Susanne Lange, granted access to the photographers' archives and quoting extensively from interviews with them, writes the first sustained analysis and biography of the Bechers' extraordinary partnership. She discusses, among other topics, both the functionalist and aesthetic dimensions of the Bechers' subject matter, their typologizing (which she finds reminiscent of nineteenth-century naturalists' classificatory schemes), and the anonymous industrial building style favored by German architects. She argues that industrial building types impose themselves on our consciousness as the cathedral did on that of the Middle Ages, and that the Bechers' photographs--which seem at first glance only to record a vanishing landscape--serve to examine this shaping of our perceptions. Their work provides us with a rare opportunity to see how we see.Bernd & Hilla Becher: Life and Work, with 53 duotone plates and more than 200 additional illustrations, is the first book to delve deeply into the sources and vision behind the evocative and melancholy beauty of the Bechers' work. It will be indispensable both as a reference for students of postwar German photography and as a guide for readers who want to know how to approach the Bechers' monumental project.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The compelling story of the collaboration of the most important husband-and-wife team in the history of photography; a lavishly illustrated critical assessment of their lifelong project of documenting the industrial landscape of the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (December 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262122863
• ISBN-13: 978-0262122863
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 9.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Architectural
  • #49 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Criticism & Essays

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview, November 27, 2007

By 

Walter O. Koenig "Amoxtli" (San Diego, California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work (Hardcover)

Anyone interested not only in industrial photography, but also avant garde photography of the last fifty is undoubtedly familiar with the work of the german husband and wife team of Bernd and Hilla Becher. The Bechers have devoted their careers to encyclopedically record different types of industrial structures such as blast furnaces, mineheads, factory facades, water and gas towers etc. Most of their subjects have been razed, so they have become chroniclers of a by-gone industrial era.

This book by Susanne Lange who wrote her dissertation on their photographic work gives an excellent overview covering a including a biographical overview, the history of industrial photography, the photographic techniques and methods used by the Bechers and an attempt at typology of the oeuvre.

The main body of the book is taken up by plates showing the different subjects that the Bechers photographed in a sort of highlight of the various types of structures that they photographed.

This MIT Press book is printed on excellent paper and I recommend it highly as an introduction. It is also valuable for its extensive bibliography.

Review by Walter O. Koenig

4.0 out of 5 stars good book, poor shipping, September 17, 2011

By 

tb - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work (Hardcover)

I love anything having to do with the Bechers, and this is an excellent book. I actually went to buy this at a store but their last copy was smudged so I thought I'd get a nice one. I was shipped in a box with some bubble rap loosely on one side and the book arrived with a smashed corner. It was a gift and I didn't have the time go try again.