Industrial façades

the long version

The more than two-hundred striking duotone plates in Hilla and Bernd Becher's Industrial Facades continue the famous Dusseldorf photographers' formal investigation of industrial structures, in this case the frontal elevations of factory buildings. Like the Bechers's earlier books on water towers, blast furnaces, and gas tanks, Industrial Facades once again clearly displays their serenely cool, rigorous approach to the structures they photograph as variations on an ideal form. The Bechers make no attempt to analyze or explain their subjects. Captions contain only the barest of information: time and place.