BECHER, Bernhard, and Hilla BECHER Anonyme Skulpturen: A Typology of technical Constructions. New York: Wittenborn and Co.1970
4to.(280 x 218 mm). Publisher's blue cloth and photo-illustrated dust jacket with white title lettering; pp. 216, 194 black and white photographs; Closed tears to the edges of the dustjacket otherwise internally fine.
First Edition, First Printing
The first photobook and masterpiece of the German photographers Bernhard and Hilla Becher, documenting the sculptural forms of postwar industrial architectures, primarily factories, which ‘develop without any regard for aesthetics’, their shapes exclusively representative of their utility and function. The Becher's chirstened the subjects of their photographs 'Anonymous Sculptures' and in 1990, they received an award at the Venice Bienelle, not for photography, but rather in praise of their unique ability to emphasize the sculptural properties of architecture. As Sean O'Hagan writes in The Guardian, "I was struck as always by the underlying sense of loss and melancholy that emanates from these photographs: you are looking at a lost world, however soul-destroying that world was for those who had to live and work in it".
Text in German, English and French
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