Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher

I was encouraged by my tutor to look at the work of Bernard Beacher and Hilla Beacher in relation to my third photograph of Assignment one –

 

I see where he was coming from, in that Beacher and Beacher’s work is of mundane industrial structures, viewed face on.

What they do is interesting, taking black and white photographs of industrial structures, placing them centrally in the frame, with minimal background features wherever possible. Each individual image says “This is the object I want you to look at, and only this object, with no mood lighting or other distraction”. If that was all there was, it would be interesting.

But these images are then grouped together with other images of similar structures, shot in the same way, from the same angle, with the same lighting etc. They’re then all placed together in the frame in a grid of nine images… a typology. So you get a frame filled with nine water towers, or nine mine tower, or nine gas tanks.

They are stark in appearance. What you see is what you get. They are the same… but different.

I understand why my tutor suggested looking at those images, as both contain face-on views of industrial structures, but my aim for this image was not the same. My interest was in the juxtaposition of the vertical objects. The trees and the silos. It was also concerned with the passage of time. How what once was possibly a rural scene had become industrialised.

I do though wonder how this would look in black and white.

 

Bibliography

Beacher, B & Beacher, H (1965 – 2005) Artworks [Photographs] At http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bernd-becher-and-hilla-becher-718 (Accessed on 23/03/2017)