Film UbuWebBernd and Hilla Becher
Michael Blackwood - Bernd and Hilla Becher: Typologies of Industrial Architecture (2007)
The husband and wife team of Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing together in 1959. Bernd (1931–2007) and Hilla (1934-2015) Becher documented architectural forms referred to as “anonymous sculpture” for over thirty years. Their extensive series of water towers, blast furnaces, coal mine tipples, industrial facades, and other vernacular industrial architecture comprise an in-depth study of the intricate relationship between form and function. Many books on their work are in publication, each titled after the industrial structure that they document. Their work is included in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2014, Hilla Becher was awarded the Grand Prize for Culture of the Sparkasse Cultural Foundation of Rhineland.