Anonymous Sculpture

Bernd Becher, Hilla Becher, 1963–1970 · Gallery 412 · Floor 4

Alright, first thing. These two wait for bad weather. Overcast only. No shadows. The camera has to sit halfway up the tower and dead level. Which means ladders. And no people in the frame. Definitely no people. Bernd and Hilla Becher. A married couple in a Volkswagen, driving around coal and steel country. If the sun comes out, no picture. At the beginning, Hilla's the photographer. She trained in Potsdam under a photographer to the Prussian court. So she knows exactly what to do with a gray day. Bernd's the one with the pencil. In 1957, he's drawing an ironworks when the wrecking crew shows up before he's finished. They're working faster than he is. So he gets a camera. Doesn't even like it, according to Hilla. Just snapshots. Something to finish the drawing from later. Now look at the dates on the label. First photograph to last, seven years. So much for the shortcut. Thirty cooling towers. The top four rows are wood. X-braces. Planks. Carpentry, basically. Up in the top right, one has a staircase running up the side and a little window. Nobody on the stairs. Nobody was trying to make sculpture here. An engineer had heat to get rid of. The shape came with the job. Different towns. Different factories. None of these was built to be looked at. Nobody figured a couple in a van would ever line them up. One by itself is a picture of a cooling tower. Put thirty together and you start comparing them like faces. They called it "anonymous sculpture." The last photograph is from 1970. That same year, all thirty are hanging in this building in MoMA's big Conceptual-art show. Called Information. Twenty years later, the Venice Biennale gives the Bechers the Golden Lion. For sculpture. And yeah, half of contemporary photography is still basically living off this move. The grid. The archive. The deadpan style. The whole art-of-looking-like-you're-not-making-art thing. Bottom right. Last one. One smooth curve of concrete. Look at the surface. It's a grid.

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