Customer Reviews

Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work

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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

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.