They have been a cornerstone of 20th-century photography, providing a point of reference and inspiration. The exhibition Bernd & Hilla Becher: History of a Method, currently on display at the Galleries of the Fondazione MAST in Bologna, showcases their unique development of a visual language based on a rigorous methodological approach. The exhibition features over 350 original black-and-white photographs, alongside additional materials, including drawings, books and posters, which help to convey the complexity and coherence of their working method.
Bernd and Hilla Becher began to work on their typological photo series, presented in blocks or grids of images, as industrial photography began to decline and the global economy underwent profound changes. In the 1960s, mines, water towers, cooling towers, gasometers, blast furnaces and grain silos became the focus of systematic research at a time when their functions were changing and major shifts in the global economy were underway.
Curated by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Max Becher and Urs Stahel, this exhibition highlights how the work by the two artists has influenced contemporary photography to this day. Their artistic practice established new standards in photography and created a new visual paradigm. According to Urs Stahel: «Through their collaborative work, which they developed in Germany, the Benelux states, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the USA, and Canada from 1959 until the early 2000s, they pioneered a new, artistically driven documentary style. Drawing on the tradition of New Objectivity photography but also building on the descriptive photography of the nineteenth century, they adopted an objective, consistently maintained representational method that strongly resonated on many levels, particularly within the contexts of Minimal Art and Conceptual Art».
The exhibition is organised into ten sections which offer new insights into their work. Their early works (Bernd trained as a decorative painter and graphic designer before turning to photography; Hilla’s photographic studies and her time at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts are explored) are included, as well as their publishing work. Indeed, the section Publications and printed materials details how, since 1977, they have collaborated with the Schirmer/Mosel publishing house to produce twenty influential publications.
The exhibition begins with the Industrial Landscapes section, featuring views of functional buildings and industrial structures built between the 1960s and the 1990s, with elements that reflect certain aspects of both Heidegger’s philosophy of technology and Husserl’s phenomenology. The Bechers’ extensive body of work. comprising around 200 documentary series, each consisting of approximately 500 negatives, includes a section dedicated to the Ewald Fortsetzung coal mine in Recklinghausen, located in the Ruhr industrial region, featuring groups of images depicting various aspects of mining architecture.
The section One Object, Different Points of View (Unfoldings) features groups of photographs based on the juxtaposition of images of the same subject taken from different angles and at comparable distances, so offering a comprehensive view of the subject’s structure. In Typologies, groups of images consisting of between nine and 24 photographs are arranged in a grid. These represent the results of a comparative analysis and classification of the forms and structures of industrial buildings.
Since 1968, the Bechers ’ investigations have broadened to encompass the homes of industrial workers and employees, focusing on the public housing complexes that were being built at the time in the Ruhr region and Rhineland, near coal mines and steel mills, and designed by postwar architects to provide new homes for a population still reeling from the bombings. This is the Houses section, which engages in a close dialogue with An object in various forms of representation: framework houses, a section that explores the theme of representation and rigorous subject description. The same half-timbered house in Birlenbach is presented in three ways: a single frontal image, a sequence of eight photographs providing a three-dimensional view of the object, and, finally, its inclusion in a fifteen-part typology.
Featuring over forty original photographs and texts from 1970, the section Anonymous Sculptures showcases a selection of images included in the book Anonyme Skulpturen. Eine Typologie technischer Bauten, a project originated from the 1969 exhibition Anonyme Skulpturen at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the MAST Foyer is hosting a show dedicated to the photographers of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, which centers on the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts, where Bernd Becher taught photography from 1976 to 1996, and the artists’ studio in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth, which used to be a space for collaboration and collective work. The exhibition features works by Andreas Gursky (Salinas and Schiesser Diptycon), Thomas Struth (Full Scale Mock Up 1, 2, 3) and Thomas Ruff (works from the Machines and Photograms series) as well as pieces by Tata Ronkholz, from the MAST Collection, and highlights the legacy and relevance of the Bechers’ method through the work of subsequent generations.
The exhibition was conceived by Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne in cooperation with the Bernd & Hilla Becher Studio, Düsseldorf, and it was organized by the Fondazione MAST, with an exhibition project in collaboration between the two institutions. The works in the exhibition come from the Bernd und Hilla Becher Archiv, preserved at the Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne, and from the Bernd & Hilla Becher Studio in Düsseldorf.
A catalogue is published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag in German, with texts by Max Becher, Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Marianne Kapfer and Urs Stahel, and a booklet, in Italian and English, is published by Fondazione MAST.
A programme of talks, screenings, presentations and workshops with free admission upon booking is available.
Paola Sammartano
Bernd & Hilla Becher. History of a Method
23 April – 27 September 2026
MAST.Galleries – MAST.Foyer
Fondazione MAST
Via Speranza 42
40133 Bologna
Italy
https://www.mast.org
