Bernd Becher
Water Towers

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Artist Bernd Becher(German, 1931–2007)German, 1931–2007

Artistand Hilla Becher (German, 1934–2015)German, 1934–2015

CultureGerman

Titles

Water Towers

Date1980

PlaceGermany

MediumGelatin silver prints

DimensionsOverall: 61 1/4 × 49 1/4 in. (155.6 × 125.1 cm)
Frame (Each): 20 1/4 × 16 1/4 in. (51.4 × 41.3 cm)
Image (Each): 15 15/16 × 12 in. (40.5 × 30.5 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by Louisa Stude Sarofim

Object number82.575.A-.I

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionAs photographers and professors at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, the husband-and-wife duo of Bernd and Hilla Becher influenced an entire generation of German photographers with their typological approach in which a single archetypal subject is described through an accumulation of diverse examples.

For more than three decades, they systematically examined the dilapidated industrial architecture of Europe and North America, from water towers and blast furnaces to the surrounding workers’ houses, all recorded against a blank sky and without expressive effects.

Their selection and photographic style of vernacular architectural subjects offered a rupture from the preexisting Modernist practice of architectural photography represented by photographers such as Julius Shulman, who chose to photograph icons of Modern architecture and emphasized their stylistic essence. As it developed in the 1960s, the Bechers’ photographic practice chimed with Conceptual art in its emphasis on “series” as well as with older traditions of objective photography as practiced in the 1930s.
Provenance[Sonnabend Gallery, Inc., New York]; purchased by MFAH, 1982.
Exhibition History"Photography and Art", Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, June 4 -August 30, 1987, Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Oct. 19, - December 27, 1987, Queens Museum, Flushing, NY, February 13, - April 3, 1988, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines,IA, May 6 - June 26, 1988 (LN:87.5)

"Photographic Masterworks: Recent Acquisitions from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," Glassell School January 23 - March 4, 1990

"Contemporary Art and Photography: Spotlight on the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," MFAH, Upper Brown Pavilion, September 30, 2001-February 3, 2002.

"Ruptures and Continuities: Photography Made after 1960 from the MFAH Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Brown Foundation Galleries, February 21 - May 9, 2010.

"Ewan Gibbs: Arlington National Cemetery," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 11 November, 2012 - 10 February, 2013.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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