Emulation
Emulation: Bernd and Hilla Becher
Bernd and Hilla Becher started taking photographs in Germany in the late 1950s. Their photographs document industry all over the world: blast furnaces, water towers, winding towers, factory facades, gas tanks. The Bechers’ images strip down industry to its most basic parts. The composition is simple: centered and straight-on. The tonal range of the images is deep, yet few if any shadows can be seen. There are no clouds in the sky, and everything in the image is completely sharp. All of these techniques come together to create images that are breathtaking and desolate, but still seductive and intriguing.
Or is it the idea—the depiction of industrial wasteland—that makes the photographs what they are? What is it about, say, a gas tank that makes its photographic documentation captivating? In my emulation, I found objects that share forms seen throughout the Bechers’ body of work: round gas tanks with superstructure, rotary objects, and complicated devices with unclear functions.
Do these forms have any essential meaning? Or is it the Bechers’ context that makes them silently sing?
