Dusseldorf School of Photography

About

Bernd and Hilla Becher spent decades photographing water towers, blast furnaces and pitheads in the same flat grey light and from the same frontal angle, then arranging them in grids of types. When Bernd Becher became a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1976, the method passed to a generation of students who took it into colour.

Candida Höfer photographs empty libraries, theatres and reading rooms. Thomas Struth began with deserted streets and later photographed museum visitors before famous paintings and families posed at home. Thomas Ruff enlarged passport-style portraits to monumental size and has since worked with astronomical and internet images. Axel Hütte photographs mountains, forests and cities veiled in haze or darkness. Andreas Gursky makes vast prints of stock exchanges, supermarkets and crowds, often digitally combined, as in 99 Cent (1999). Look for detachment: no dramatic angles, few close-ups and a density of detail that rewards standing close.