Repetition Task

Bernd and Hilda Becher

The Bechers worked collaboratively in documenting the German industrial architecture in 1959 such as water towers and storage silos. 'The idea,' they said, 'is to make families of objects,' or, on another occasion, 'to create families of motifs’They would take photographs using large format camera in similar lighting conditions and camera angle with no remarkable sky lines or shadows, thus ensuring that each image was to look as similar to each other as technically possible. The Bechers had an almost scientific and controlled approach to documenting their subject matter , the large format camera demonstrate this as with it they were able to use the moving plains to eliminate any perspective; achieving methodical  and objective representations of the ornate and immense structures.

 

The images would then be displayed to the viewer on mass; grouped according to type. What was simply just a water tower that the viewer may pass everyday to work or the mundane structure in the field that the viewer glanced at everyday from their window, now became something more, a document, a symbol, and in some ways an artefact. The groups of water towers all looking so familiar in form and design and then had been identically placed and depicted however on closer inspection tiny differences could be noticed, almost characteristics as these huge structures seemed almost personified. The viewer invited to compare differences between them, their function and industrial purpose seems to have been taken away as they appear before us as almost sculptural landmarks.

The bechers record of industrial structure can be correlated to Baudrillard’s theory of simulation and the hyperreal both in the way they have been depicted and in the way in which it is presented. The images become merely an imprint of reality an imitation of what is real. The Bechers may have been making a comment about the disappearing industrial structure which held so much German architectural history; all that would be left would be this visual representation made on mass.