Search

Though Bernd and Hilla Becher worked with photography from the 1950s, it was not until the publication of Anonyme Skulpturen: Eine Typologie technischer Bauten in 1970 that their work was introduced to a broad audience. Known for their documentation of Western European industrial architecture, this paper considers the difference in how the Bechers' photographic documents have been presented in exhibitions, and how they are presented in Anonyme Skulpturen. while their exhibited works are typological grids of industrial architecture, the book presents these typologies as sequences. The difference prompts these questions: what kind of historical data does documentary photography produce? Is its purpose progression or preservation, sequence or seriality? While the Bechers have admitted that their photographs are a way to preserve disappearing industrial architecture, the sequential aspects of Anonyme Skulpturen suggest more progressive meanings. Such a reading is antithetical to considerations of the Bechers that see their photographs as aesthetic statements that archive industrial forms while ignoring the social conditions of industry. Considering the structural components of Anonyme Skulpturen, this paper concludes that the book is a witness to the social conditions of industry, and presents a narrative of progress in post-war Western Europe centralized around the theme of deindustrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]