BERND & HILLA BECHER
Lynda Morris
Lynda Morris: BERND & HILLA BECHER. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1974. First edition. Slim quarto. Photographically printed thick wrappers. Side stitched perfect binding. 24 pp. 18 full page black and white photo reproductions. Uncoated wrappers lightly shelfworn. A very good or better copy of this rare catalog.
7.75 x 9.5 softcover catalog with 24 pages and 18 full page black and white photo reproductions finely produced by the Shenvel Press. Catalogue of a 1974 exhibition of the Bechers' work with a preface by Norbert Lynton and introduction - including an interview made in March 1974 - by Lynda Morris. Of the 18 images shown, nine are of objects and structures in Wales. 'Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures for more than a decade: blast furnaces, bunkers, silos, cooling towers, gasometers, and pit heads. The collection began modestly as information for Bernd's paintings and has grown into a widely respected archive of industrial architecture.' (Lynda Morris writing in the Introduction).
Typological, repetitive, at times oddly humorous, Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs of industrial structures are, in their cumulative effect, profoundly moving. The Becher's serenely cool, disarmingly objective, and notoriously obsessive images of watertowers, gas tanks, grain elevators, blast furnaces, and mine heads have been taken over a period of almost thirty years, under overcast skies, with a view camera that captures each detail and tonality of wood, concrete, brick, and steel.
Culturally, their brilliant black and white photographs of industrial buildings are rooted in the history of architecture and engineering, where their work provided an early research tool and resource for industrial archaeologists seeking to broaden the scope of architectural conservation. With their photographs of water towers and winding towers, blast furnaces, silos and gas tanks, over sixty of which are reproduced in this book, Bernd and Hilla Becher set new standards in perceptual aesthetics, presenting heavy industry as an object of art. Rendered timeless by the camera and isolated from their original, often perplexingly complex surroundings, they appear as monumental symbols of their own history - with all the stylistic diversity of the great masterpieces of architecture.
These photographs convey the unique characteristics, physical complexity, and eerie presence in the landscape of blast furnaces and other Industrial Structures in Great Britain, Belgium, France, Austria, Germany, and the United States. Bernd and Hilla Becher [taught] at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. They began their collaborative photographic enterprise in 1957, when they did a study of workers' houses in their native Germany. The Bechers follow in a distinguished line of German photographers that includes August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Werner Manz, all of whom contributed in different ways to the definition of "objective" photography.
Lynda Morris is known as a pioneering curator who gave many, now well-recognised, artists their first UK exhibitions, including Agnes Martin (1974), Bernd and Hilla Becher (1974–75), and Gerhard Richter (1977). Further, from 1991 to 2009 she established and curated ‘EASTinternational’, an open submission exhibition in Norwich, with a series of invited selectors each year, including Konrad Fischer, Marian Goodman, and Rudi Fuchs. ‘EASTinternational’ expanded the boundaries of a London-centred UK art scene and turned Norwich into a recognised international hub for contemporary art. From 1980 to 2009 Morris was curator of the Norwich Gallery at Norwich University of the Arts, where she is the current Professor of Curation and Art History.