Killing Becher
For an entire generation of contemporary photographers, and by consequence for cohorts of young photography students, the photographic oeuvre of the husband and wife team Bernd and Hiller Becher has represented an obligatory initiation. Many have found their inspiration in this new way of conceiving photography, born in the Sixties and called “New German Objectivity”, in reference to an earlier movement, represented notably by August Sander in the 1930s. Icons of a powerful manner of redefining the role of photography, then of an over-exploited dogma, often misunderstood and badly represented, these monuments of the history of photography have waited patiently for an irreverent and humorous attack to rock them gently on their pedestal. Mission accomplished with Killing Becher, an installation which achieves the best homage one could pay to these two authors: an immediate identification of a style and an aesthetic which has marked contemporary photography.
Swen Renault
