No contemporary artists have had a more profound effect on the way we depict buildings than Bernd and Hilla Becher. The husband-and-wife team began photographing industrial buildings in their native Germany back in the 1960s, framing each individual grain elevator, gas tank, or water tower like a human portrait and grouping the black-and-white images according to their formal and typological similarities. The photos’ simple power and the couple’s leadership at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf inspired a school of photography, which includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, and Candida Höfer. Bernd died in 2007, Hilla last month, on Oct. 10.
Coal Bunkers, 1974
Water Towers series by Bernd and Hilla Becher (right) at The Broad Museum, Los Angeles.