Repetitions Task 5

Bernd&Hilla Becher
 Cooling Towers.

The Becher intention was to document the industrial landscape of Europe and America. They wanted to photograph the water towers, mine shafts and silos of a disappearing and unappealing industrial past. 


The Becher approach was to record them within a strict code of rules. Photographing the structures as identically as possible using a large format 6x9 camera. Always with a flat grey sky and with a front and profile angle providing a clear objective image of each structure, the structure is always placed central in the frame and separated from its environment. Another thing worth noting is that the Becher always shot without a human being within the frame, humanising an image would alter the rawness of the structures and reduce the brutality of the industrial edifice.


This creates a coherent typology seeing all the structures documented in the same place within a book with multiple images on one page or as a collage with multiple images in a frame.

Bernd&Hilla Becher.
Blast Furnaces.

Once the images are set next to each other we begin to see how the Bechers have succeeded in creating and documenting the vast differences of industrial structures and yet they have ensured that this variety has come together to create the perfect typology of European industrial structures.

Bernd&Hilla Becher
Gas Storage Tanks.

These documentary images by the Bechers are representations of the reality. They cannot by described as simulacra because the Bechers went to such great lengths to ensure that they are a direct a copy as possible without the influence of the environment or from human interaction. 
These images are not a slight or unreal or a superficial likeness or a semblance 
of reality they are the real thing, documented as meticulously as possible.