Repetition. Amplification.
Gas Tanks, 1983-92. Bernd and Hilla Becher.
In 1970, Bernd and Hilla Becher released a photography book entitled Anonymous Sculptures. A typology of technical buildings. The Tate museum describes it as “…an encyclopaedic inventory of industrial structures including kilns, blast furnaces and gas-holders categorized into sections (the pot, the oven, the chimney, the winch, the pump, and the laboratory.)”. Basically, a catalog.
Taken in isolation, most of the images offer little more than a basic, straightforward visual rendition of the documented object. The symmetry of the structures can be interesting, but the work isn’t meant to be processed individually: its power resides in layout, and repetition.
I’ve written several times about series and essays, and how multiple images allow dynamics to be introduced into a message. How less impactful pictures, ones that wouldn’t necessarily stand on their own, can act as transitions, or pivots, within a sequence. In the end, I’m fascinated with essays because of their potential to become a different whole. The ensemble as new object.
Amplifier
What I see in the Becher’s work, is an aesthetic of patterns. These repetitions act as an amplifier, to the point where they almost dissolve their original subject. In a way, they’re obfuscating the structures: we no longer see silos or boilers, not really. We see echoes of shapes. The overall form takes on a different meaning—stranger, less precise… less documentary.
But there’s a paradox at play here: as the singular objects recede, their essence is somehow elevated. It’s not just a silo anymore, it’s the Chronicle of All Silos. There’s a concentration of topic, a hypnotic majesty in the way each frame sits next to the other, an almost musical quality in the rhythm this creates. And if the goal of documentary photography is to communicate a truth, to convey a clear, reverberating message about a subject, then, in my view, these graphic leitmotivs succeed where a “purer” approach would’ve failed.
Through transformation, through form, Bernd and Hilla Becher create an alternate physicality. It makes us look. It makes us notice. It makes us think.
There are lessons to be learned, I think: from a visual standpoint but also in terms of how we can allow ourselves to interpret a subject, after capture. We should never underestimate the importance of selection, and presentation, in altering the perception or even the significance of our work.
Photography is alchemical. Intent can be distilled.
P.S. For a glimpse into the origin and evolution of this project, I highly suggest Michael Collin’s essay The Long Look.
