Bernd and Hilla Becher: 4 Decades

Typologies of Industrial Buidlings

Bernd and Hilla Becher discuss their beginnings as documentarians of 19th century industrial architecture while showing us their retrospective exhibition at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof Museum.

Bernd and Hilla Becher had been working together as photographers since 1957, documenting and classifying endangered architecture, such as industrial structures, that are now vanishing from the modern landscape. By the end of the 1960's they became part of the conceptual art movement in view of their minimalist approach. As a result, their work can be found in the collections of most major art museums. For others familiar with the beginnings of industrial structures their photographic typologies represent a brilliant study of the early forms of industrial architecture.