Bernd and Hilla Becher: United strength for photo art and aesthetics of documentation

Keywords: photography art, photo artist, top artist, industrial monument, technology history, historical documentation, Düsseldorf school, Bernd and Hilla Becher

Without a doubt: the most important photo artists in the world

An absurd statement that the content can only be wrong? Yes, of course, but:

Bernd and Hilla Becher are currently taking place 144 of the art world best list ( www.artfacts.net/en/artists/by-ranking.html ) and until a few years ago there were a hundred best artists in the world. They are part of the crème de la crème of the art world, and that has been a very long time.

Everyone who has noticed more from the area of ​​"art and culture" than the pure vocabulary "art", knows Bernd and Hilla Becher (even if many younger art enthusiasts no longer know what they did ...). Every artistically active photographer in this world knows Bernd and Hilla Becher, their work and details of their career.

Think of the "almost" and "presumably" and others actually owed to the balance; But that's what it looks like because a good part of the best photographers in the world went through the “Becher School”: Thomas Ruff is a photo artist and No. 12 of the world's best list, the same profession Thomas Struth follows in 52, Andreas Gursky is No. 55 and Candida Höfer No. 99.

Among the 100 best artists in the world, eight concentrate fully on medium photography, four of which of the "Düsseldorf School" .

The remaining four ( Nan Goldin , Robert Mapplehorpe , Cindy Sherman , Wolfgang Tillmans ) had little chances of visiting Bernd and Hilla Becher "Düsseldorf School" , but in their training certainly had to deal with the special features of the photographic art mediated by Bernd and Hilla Becher.

Not a bad cut; And if the focus is on the international on German photo art, a photography artist who had not gone through Bernd and Hilla Becher's "Brain and Eye" was difficult for a long time: Axel Hütte (No. 958), Jörg Sasse (No. 1144), Boris Becker (No. 1886), Bernhard Fuchs (No. 2385), Simone Nieweg (No. 3883), Elger Esser (No. 5749) and Petra Wunderlich (No. 8691), Laurenz Berges, Volker Döhne, Claus Goedicke, Claudia Fährenkemper, Tata Ronkholz-all known German photo artists, all cup students.

In it-and not only in the huge work of photographic art, which was marveled at the veneration of photographic art that Bernd and Hilla have left-is also the real reason that connoisseurs of photo art have awe in voice when it comes to Bernd and Hilla Becher: The two have produced photography artists on the ongoing volume.

To a large extent, Bernd and Hilla Becher contributed to the fact that these photographers are considered an artist at all. A very decisive part of them are also responsible for the fact that the art of photography is also classified as art by the German art scientists (and the following media, and the following people in German -speaking countries).

Bernd and Hilla Becher have achieved that photographers are allowed to do art, they have made photography into art.

This as part of a development that had parallels in all art centers in the world, but in Germany and the entire German culture, Bernd and Hilla Becher were among the crucial pioneers for the recognition of artistic photography.

Since the end of the 19th century, photographers have been trying that the works they have made can also be regarded as art.

Regardless of whether it is "just the pure photographic illustration" or whether photography played a role as one of several media when creating a work of art.

Of course, the photographers were able to book many successes on the way of recognition "their art form", because in all common definitions of the art concept, photographs can be as good as works of art as performances without movement, two-word poems or fatets ... but in the second half of the 20th century one of the most influential sociologists of that time, the French Pierre Félix Bourdieu (1930-1930- 2002) photography as "illegitimate art" ; In 2014, the problem area of ​​"Photography between Art and Documentation" will be examined in a dissertation at the Free University of Berlin.

The art of photography, at the main sheer times of Bernd and Hilla Becher (approx. 1960 to 2000), still urgently needed lighthouse artists and advocates (and today, where the signs of freedom restriction are, she will probably soon need it again).

In order to participate with noticeable influence, to give photography a decisive thrust in the direction of "acceptance as art", Bernd and Hilla Becher had to become influential people and photography artists. In their time a huge project, not unclear to tackle it in pairs:

Bernd and Hilla Bechers Weg to Art

You won't be artist by yourself, even Bernd and Hilla Becher (although the two of them become "self -art" in their career are quite close). Before Bernd and Hilla Becher became the "Bernd-and-Hilla cup" art couple named in a word, who worked with combined forces for photo art, the two were now individuals:

Bernd Becher is actually called Bernhard Becher, was born on August 20, 1931 in Siegen and had to do with the manual side of art early on: his father was the owner of a company for decorative painting, in which Bernd Becher initially completed an apprenticeship (1947 to 1950); Perhaps with the idea that the craft stays in the family.

After the apprenticeship, Bernd Becher spent some (training?) Time in Italy, in order to study free graphics at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart from 1953, among other things at Karl Rössing. With the Austrian graphic artist and book illustrator Karl Rössing (1897 - 1987) as the teacher, the signs were more on art than on craft:

Rössing had expressed itself in wooden stings (1917 to 1950), linen cuts and wooden panel prints (1950 to approx. 1983), pictures and drawings (1981 to 1987 and again and again in the early days) and despite these sometimes very traditional media, it was one of the advanced contemporaries of the last century. He has z. B. exhibited at the artist association "New Sezession" in Munich, participated in the "International Black and White Exhibition" of the Salzburg Article Association "Der Aquarius" from 1921 (together with Ernst Barlach, George Grosz, Alfred Kubin and Käthe Kollwitz) and participated in the legendary exhibition "New Affair" in Mannheim.

Rössing tends to work surrealistic, with hints to the new objectivity and with the processing of many suggestions from the latest films and literature; His unusually combined works made of apparently strange and mysterious worlds were clearly in the field of art and not to use the use.

In 1956, Becher graduated from this man as a state -certified free graphic artist and began to draw the first industrial monuments of modernity, e.g. B. the bridges, towers and stairs of the "Grube Eisenhardter Tiefbau" in the Siegerland (start of operation May 11, 1859, operating setting June 30, 1957).

For Bernd Becher, these drawings were the reason to turn to photography: he wanted to fully grasp the industrial wing in all details, but did not have the time for the production of more details because the demolition of the system began - which is why cups exhausted a small picture camera to "at least document the pit in the photo".

The prelude to one of the most famous photo series of the 20th century (which was not alone), the start of a life in a area of ​​tension between or from photography, art and documentation, which has not yet lost its entire load today.

Before it really started, Becher added crucial specialist knowledge of his artistic training: he trained as a typographer at the Düsseldorf Art Academy (1959 to 1961). This study of the art of designing a printed work, the design and combination of layout, sentence, paper selection, cover and and and comprises, should have an important influence on the work that he later developed in cooperation with his wife Hilla.

Hilla Becher was born on September 2, 1934 in Potsdam as Hildegard Weser. She grew up in a surgical family with three siblings, had already contacted her mother, who was trained as a photographer at the Berlin Lette Association in the 1920s, as a child and held her first camera in her hand at the age of 13.

That was in 1947, and the Hilla, which was of course predetermined for Abitur, should come into contact with professional photography faster than expected: she was allowed to refer to school in an advanced puberty because of "rebellious statements"/had to take three years of training as a photographer Potsdam photo studio Walter Eichgrüns

The son of the Hoffotographer Ernst Eichgrün had just received the order to document the Potsdam cityscape and the historical castle facilities of the Berlin suburb, trainee Hilla was allowed to assist in the recordings of the Palaces and Gardens of Sanssouci, so it was already employed in the landscape photographic development of architecture and sculpture

Her first self-employed order also pretended the later common oeuvre of the cups: In a Reichsbahn identification work, precise recordings with technical details of individual steam locomotive elements were needed in order to be able to repair the damage to the Second World War.

Hilla Becher photographed the larger components on the depot and the smaller ones in the studio, discovered their talent for the fine perception of material features and their joy in developing a suitable presentation; As a journeyman's examination, she delivered the documentation of a gas plant, the "photographic dissecting" of industrial meales should from then on.

With 20 fled Hilla cups from the GDR and landed in Hamburg, from 1954 to 1957 she worked there as an independent photograph of a company that made aerial photos on order. In 1957 Hilla Becher moved to the Troost advertising agency in Düsseldorf ("Persil 59 - The Best Persil ever existed"), where she met her future husband Bernd Becher and her future professor Walter Breker.

Graphic and typography professor Walter Breker worked in addition to his professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy as a typographer for the advertising agency, his student Bernd Becher worked there to this academy during his studies.

Ordered through these acquaintances, Hilla Becher dared to apply with a application folder at the art academy only consisting of photographs (a novelty that was never previously tolerated), she was accepted in 1958. She visited the City Graphics courses at Walter Breker, who had been appointed professor and head of the class for use graphics at the Düsseldorf Art Academy at the age of 50 in 1954, the highlight of his career and his last office, which he carried out until his retirement in 1969.

With the experienced graphic artist and typographer Breker, who, in addition to (also previous) teaching, had always been arrested with a leg in practical exercise and who was involved in national and international and international associations (Federation of German Graphicians, Alliance Graphique Internationale), the self-confident prospective artist had done a gold handle: He promoted her enthusiasm for photography so far that Hilla Bitch Not only the first photo workshop was able to set up in the academy, but also the medium of photography in addition to painting technology, printing graphics, wood or metal processing to the general range of teaching for all students.

Bernd Becher also heard at Breker and, like Hilla Becher, was enthusiastic about the brittle charm of the useless use of modernity. This met in a degree in the use of use of the use of use of two people with passion for the (then not yet existent) artistic industrial photography, of which one is just initiating the expansion of training by medium photography-a probability that can be compared, for example, that two entomologists with passion for cryptocephalus serice, small green silky fall beetles, at a course of correct preparation of insects together The breeding and research station for small, silky case beetles set up by one of the two set up by one of the preparation course ...

Bernd and Hilla Becher are similar, they used the photo workshop set up by Hilla in the academy for their more and more work together and also married in 1961. Even if it was mainly Hilla who, in addition to her own work with her husband with her well -founded expertise on camera technology and handling, establishment and operation of dark chambers, helped a wide variety of student projects to implement, her husband Bernd received the teaching position in 1976 and thus became the first official owner of the first professorship for photography at the Düsseldorf Art Akademie.

But Hilla was also lucky with the man: Bernd Becher officially headed the photography class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy until 1996, but was obviously able to resist the temptation, in addition to the professorship (which would actually have been due to Hilla, Bernd Becher was also more draftsman in the heart as a photographer until his heart); He is said to have not even tried those that are usual in the art-farm. That would probably have led to divorce at some point rather than over four decades of extremely fruitful cooperation.

Which would have been a shame at first because then the famous Becher School, from which a long series of very successful photo artists emerged until the end of the Becher teaching in 1996. Hilla Becher was an important and equal part of this school, even without a teaching position in the institutional sense, her studio was always open to the students, her judgment was just as popular as that of her husband.

Any disturbance of the long and fertile cooperation of the 'born for the documentation of industrial aesthetics' married couple would also have been a loss for photo art, because the two also left us for a few centuries, on which the article "Bernd and Hilla Becher: Photo Art and photo artist is taken by a success duo".

Lina cream

Passionate author with lively art interest

www.kunstplaza.de