The Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher

The Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher

Director: Marianne Kapfer
94 minutes, Duitsland 2010
German with English subtitles

Bernd and Hilla Becher were a German artist couple who had a profound influence on late 20th-century photography. They focused on documenting disappearing industrial structures in Western Europe and North America that once defined the age of industrialization. Their work was methodical and rigorous; they used a large-format camera to capture industrial structures such as blast furnaces, winding towers, grain silos, cooling towers, and gas tanks with great precision, elegance, and passion. They often presented their photographs in grids or arrays of four to thirty images, which they referred to as typologies. They viewed the buildings themselves as ‘anonymous sculptures.‘
The film is part of the context program of the exhibition Designed World — Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz 1940 - 1997, on discplay at Huis Marseille Amsterdam until June 21st 2026.

The multifaceted photographer, product designer, and interior architect Tata Ronkholz was one of the first students in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s renowned photography class at the Art Academy Düsseldorf, which she entered in 1978. Her fellow students included Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth, all of whom went on to achieve international acclaim.

Ronkholz became known for her compelling photographic series of kiosks (Trinkhallen) and small shops, capturing characteristic moments of urban everyday culture. Her work belongs to the tradition of objective, documentary photography — a tradition decisively shaped by Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like theirs, Ronkholz’s photographs are marked by clear compositions, a serial approach, and a documentary focus on architectural structures and everyday built environments.