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Bernd Becher
Hilla Becher
Kühltürme, Deutschland (Cooling Towers, Germany), 1966-1990

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Kühltürme, Deutschland (Cooling Towers, Germany)
Artist names
Bernd BecherHilla Becher
Date created
1966-1990
Classification
photograph
Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
nine, overall: 67 1/8 in. × 55 1/2 in. (170.5 cm × 140.97 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
© Estate of Bernd and Hilla Becher
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.828.A-I
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

Hilla Becher remembers her travels with Bernd Becher

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transcripts

SFX: A brief, simple industrial sound, like water pumping into a tower, grain pouring out of a tower, or a blast furnace blasting, repeated quietly underneath.

 

BECHER:

…we looked for motels that had no window in the back and the bathroom has no window. …And then that was a darkroom.

 

NARRATOR:

That’s right — any one of these pictures might have been developed in a motel bathtub. The Bechers were constantly grappling with makeshift solutions like that, plus bad weather, equipment issues, being chased off the land. Not to mention the indifference of their photography colleagues.

 

BECHER: 

There always are times that you almost give up but we had two, two people and there was always one who said, “Come on; don’t be silly.

 

NARRATOR:

A lot of the structures in their photographs are gone now.

 

BECHER:

Bernd and I, we knew actually from the beginning …that this is not eternal and that’s not an architecture like the pyramids. It’s, ah…it’s made for coming and disappearing.

 

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