Dead Heroes II

You Are Doing It Wrong, Bochum, August 2014

You Are Doing It Wrong, Bochum, August 2014

I have no idea, if Hilla Becher ever took any other pictures than those of industrial structures. Maybe there are some pictures of her kids, images of last christmas, a selfie with her husband who had already passed away in 2007.

Hilla Becher and her husband Bernd Becher have been the epitome of consistency in visual output for over 40 years. What do we make of this gigantic oeuvre?! I often struggle in my images with consistency, I get bored easily, I try different cameras and different approaches. I am light-years away from what the Becher’s did. And although I am not sure that I actually aspire their rigid approach, I absolutely admire what they have done. They single-handledly introduced a conceptual way of thinking about photography, something that has not been there before.

And they did it with a vengeance, a monk-like furor of meditation, that send them all over the world in search of the always-same. They put Europe in general and Germany in particular on the map of current photography and their legacy lives on: There is practically no one, who is currently working in Germany who has not been touched by the Düsseldorf School of photography: Either by following them or by struggling to find another way.

Hilla Becher died this month in her home in Düsseldorf.

 

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