Bernd Becher

Bernd Becher (Siegen, 1931 – Rostock, 2007) was a German photographer who, together with his wife Hilla, formed a collaborative duo of conceptual artists devoted to documenting German industrial architecture. Their importance lies in turning the photography of factories, cooling towers, silos and gas tanks into a rigorous method of study.

Becher studied painting in Stuttgart from 1953 to 1956 and typography in Düsseldorf from 1959 to 1961. Around 1959 he began photographing, with Hilla, the buildings that were disappearing from the Ruhr Valley. They worked with a large-format camera, in black and white, and from a straightforward, objective viewpoint. They grouped the images in grids of six, nine or fifteen, which they called typologies, so that viewers could compare form and function.

From 1976 to 1996 Becher taught photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and his students included Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth. The so-called Düsseldorf School, or Becher school, influenced generations of documentary photographers. After his death, Hilla continued to reassemble the work of both.