14 Facts About Hilla Becher

Hilla Becher was a German conceptual photographer.

Hilla Becher's career spanned more than 50 years and included photographs from the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Italy.

Hilla Becher's mother attended Lette-Haus, a photography school for women, and occasionally worked in a studio, retouching photographs.

Hilla Becher's father was a high school language teacher, later drafted to World War II.

Hilla Becher printed and sold photographs at postcard size for the teachers.

Hilla Becher was expelled from high school and became an intern for Walter Eichgrun, a working studio and commissioned photographer, in 1951, while studying photography at a vocational school and finishing her high school degree in Berlin.

Hilla Becher spent three years working on commission with Eichgrun and did various solo assignments.

In 1957, Hilla Wobeser met Bernhard Becher, known as Bernd at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, where the two studied.

Hilla Becher is credited for aiding in the start and structuring of the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf's Photography department.

Hilla Becher wanted the subject to be photographed with its surroundings, while Bernd wanted the subject to be the only focal point.

Hilla Becher's photographs are studies of industrial architecture and landscapes, the composition of the photograph forces the viewer to examine the structure.

Hilla Becher sought to capture the underlying function and organization of this new ideal by ultimately picturing these differences in industrialization.

Hilla Becher's work is often said to be continuous in that each photograph cannot stand on its own; Hilla Becher's work is a body of work and a thematic response in framing the political, enlightening, and responsive post-war Germany.

Hilla Becher's work was innovative in that, by capturing the post-war, she has ultimately defined Germany before mass industry and by the idealized past.