None of Sander's portraits stand out to me but instead I like all of them, as a group, together. They work well as a group, and I feel it is obvious they are meant to be together because this was the original intention and idea. They photos have not been taken with an artists view but by a man who shot photos to simply save these people in time. Even though, nowadays I would consider them to be art, but only if they are in a group, because this is when the whole project comes together and can be clearly understood.
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August Sander
One of the first typology artists was August Sander, a german photographer who in 1929 published 'Face of Our Time', a series of portraits. Sander categorised his portraits according to profession, class or theme. Sander's went out to create a series of portraits that would document the entire range of contemporary German society. The portraits were not to be portraits of individuals, but rather portraits of men or women that represented everyone of that particular profession or class. August Sander took portrait photos simply to document the German society, he wanted to record and save what these people were like and how they represented themselves. |
Bernd & Hilla Becher
Bernd & Hilla Becher were German conceptual artists and photographers who worked as a pair. They are best known for their typology images of industrial buildings and framework. In 1958 Bernd and Hilla first came together to take photographs and document the rapidly disappearing German industrial architecture. They initially focussed on photographing the steel and mining industries where Becher's family had worked, but they were attracted to the different style of shapes in the designs of certain buildings and quickly built up a collection of photos of different industrial structures; gas tanks, water towers, coal bunkers, storage silos etc. |
I particularly like the water tower typologies by Bernd and Hilla, I think their unusual, space like shapes are extremely interesting and create a selection of very weird, almost mysterious images. They are all well shot with all the towers being directly in frame and in focus. The contrast of the rough structures against the stark grey backgrounds also fits with the style of images and helps make them stand out and look even weirder. I learnt that the backgrounds are always white/grey because Bernd & Hilla Becher always shot their photos on cloudy or foggy days so that the background does not interfere with the main focus point in the image. |