Hochöfen (Blast Furnaces), 2007

In the Typlogies series, as in all of Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs, objectivity and formal stringency prevail, whereby the sober registration of the factual almost inevitably leads to the formation of series. When the artists began their work in 1959, the juxtaposition of functionally and structurally similar buildings became a pool from which a strategy characteristic of their work emerged. The serial principle leads to the typologies of industrial buildings that predominate in their work. The precise arrangement and balancing of the visual weighting plays a pivotal role here.

As central elements of the steel industry, blast furnaces were used to extract pig iron and, with their characteristic architecture, shaped the appearance of industrial regions. Their unmistakable shape makes them both a symbol of steel production and an iconic testimony to industrial culture.