Product Description

Bernd and Hilla Becher have profoundly influenced the international photography world over the past several decades. Their unique genre, which falls somewhere between topological documentation and conceptual art, is in line with the aesthetics of such early-twentieth-century masters of German photography as Karl Blossfeldt, Germaine Krull, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and August Sander. Framework Houses, their first and most famous book, was originally published in Germany in 1977 and quickly went out of print. This new edition of that classic work takes advantage of reproduction and printing technologies not available in 1977.

Most of the houses in the book were built between 1870 and 1914 in the Siegen region of Germany, one of the oldest iron-producing areas of Europe. The houses were built by immigrants who came to work in the mines or blast furnace plants. In 1790 a law was enacted to save wood for iron production by preventing its excessive use for house-building. The law prescribed the amount of lumber structurally required and forbade the construction of elements serving only ornamental purposes. It also specified the maximum strength for beams, sills, cornerposts, and studs. A functional framework, combined with neoclassical proportions, determined the new type of house; it was also applied to other buildings such as barns, churches, schools, inns, shops, factories, and mine structures.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1156197 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 350 pages

About the Author
Bernd and Hilla Becher have collaborated since 1959. Founders of the internationally acclaimed Becher class at the Dusseldorf Art Academy, they have received numerous awards, including the Golden Lion at the 1990 Venice Biennale and the 2002 Erasmus Award. Bernd Becher retired as Professor at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in 1999.

Customer Reviews

Early Bechers at their most lyrical
With the recent interest in German wunderkind photographers Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth (known collectively as 'Struffsky') its particularly telling to see early work by their mentors Bernd and Hilla Becher. Framework Houses is among their earliest work, with the bulk of it dating from the early sixties through the seventies. The virtually patented Becher formula of typology is already in place (back at a time when Robert Adams was still a struggling English major): same flat viewing angle, precisionist approach and shadowless light. Taken individually, the photos are deadpan documents of an architectural type, but the strength of the Becher's work has always lay in the collective. The effect of seeing page after page of images so similar, yet individual, is an astonishing rendering of a past industrial age. This rendering is underlined in the last section of the book where the images are grouped in the famous Becher grids. Where this body departs from their other series of factories, water towers, et al, is that while the houses are part of an industrial region, they aren't industrial structures. Other series describe the 'what' of function, but these domestic forms also include a possible 'who' of the people that reside there. An interest in pattern is evident, too. The graphic rendering of shingle siding or dark timber against light stucco is a surprisingly lyrical play on theme and variation, where the grid of halftimbers begins to deviate from strict rationality. In the overall collective, this line quality becomes almost as giddy as a Paul Klee etching. This series is likely the least typical of the Becher's work, but in my opinion, is the most compelling.