EN / nl
Becher, Bernd & Hilla
Bernd b. 1931, Siegen, Germany; d. 2007, Rostock, Germany
Hilla b. 1934, Potsdam, Germany; lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany
Winterslag Mijn, 1988 36 gelatin silver prints, 35 at 31 x 41 m, 1 of 25.7 x 50.8 cm Collection: Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne
Bernd and Hilla Becher worked as photographic collaborators until Bernd’s death in 2007. The Bechers became especially well known for their strict black and white photography of industrial installations like cooling towers, gas containers and mine elevators. Their photographs of industrial complexes of mostly nineteenth-century origin portray a lost world. Although their interest in the industrial landscape is mainly formal and aesthetic, their work is nonetheless socially, economically and politically fraught. In front of their lens, the spent and disused remains of the Industrial Revolution become the fossils of modern day dinosaurs: monumental and impressive, but lifeless, with no future. These deserted complexes are no longer productive, and offer no employment. The Winterslag coalmine in Genk was one of seven mines on the Kempen coalfield. It opened in 1906, and the Bechers photographed it in 1988, the year it closed for good, distilling 82 years of history in 36 pictures. FL