“We photographed water towers and furnaces because they are honest. They are functional, and they reflect what they do - that is what we liked. A person always is what s/he wants to be, never what s/he is.”

—Bernd and Hilla Becher 

Applying rigid aesthetic parameters to create visual order and simplicity, the Bechers’ black and white photographs of industrial structures explores the mechanical, man-made and modern. The photographed constructions are gathered into typologies, as displayed in the present lot. Each typology was captured over several years, but always with the same straight-on perspective and under the same overcast weather conditions. Exposing each structure’s shared and individual attributes, the periodic categorisation of the artists’ photography is almost scientific in essence. The Bechers’ rigorous approach offers an unbiased and unfettered portrait of the industrial age, presented in the artists’ specified mode of classification. 

“In the early 1990s the Bechers visited our gallery and asked if I was interested in handling their editions. I was pleased to do this and we started with a little show of the prints they owned as their proofs collection. They were curious to see what kind of printing techniques we could offer other than the somewhat pale offset prints of the past. We spent time together at their studio in Düsseldorf Kaiserswerth to decide which and how many individual prints we could put together to different configurations of “typologies”. We accomplished 7 typologies... [which are] still among the most important of their prints.”

—Jörg Schellmann