Industriebauten: 10 Fotografien von Bernd und Hilla Becher

From 1967-1968, the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach held a series of 34 exhibitions featuring the work of a number of avant-garde, contemporary artists. Each was accompanied by a catalogue, in a printed cardboard or plastic box, often personalized by the artist in some appropriate manner - felt in the Joseph Beuys box, for example. By so doing, these box-catalogues became "multiples" rather than typical museum catalogues.
An exhibition of Bernd and Hilla Becher's Industriebauten was the third in the series and, in keeping with its spirit, the accompanying card catalogue-box was a facsimile Agfa-Gaevert photographic paper container. The Becher box-catalogue, an early series in their career, was produced in an edition of only 55 rather than the more typical 220, 330, 440, 550 or 660 of the other catalogues. Each set contained ten photographs of the Bechers' "anonymous sculpture", images of winding towers, silos, gas tanks and lime-kilns, each taken in their now-familiar stark documentary style. These images not only invite a comparison of the morphological differences of buildings fulfilling the same function, but also provide archeological evidence of an industrial landscape which, by its very nature, is ephemeral.