Hilla Becher

Hilla Becher met Bernd Becher at the Kunskatademie Düsseldorf and first collaborated in 1959, while working as freelance photographers. Their lifelong commitment has been the systematic documentation of industrial buildings, including water towers and cooling towers, blast furnaces, coal mines and steel mines, gas tanks, and grain elevators. Starting in the late '60s, their work gained worldwide visibility via exhibition in such venues as the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Institute...See more

Hilla Becher met Bernd Becher at the Kunskatademie Düsseldorf and first collaborated in 1959, while working as freelance photographers. Their lifelong commitment has been the systematic documentation of industrial buildings, including water towers and cooling towers, blast furnaces, coal mines and steel mines, gas tanks, and grain elevators. Starting in the late '60s, their work gained worldwide visibility via exhibition in such venues as the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London: Documenta, Kassel, Germany; Bienal de São Paulo; Venice Bienale; and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. The Bechers were influential professors at the Düsseldorf Art Academy between 1976 and 1996, training a generation of photographers now known collectively as the Düsseldorf School. The Bechers' work is represented in major collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Gallery, London, and they have received numerous awards, among the the Erasmus Prize and the Hasselblad Award. Over a dozen monographs of their work have been published, all focusing on the many faces of industrial architecture. See less