Bernd and Hilla Becher: Industrial Visions at The National Museum in Cardiff/ Wales
26 October 2019–1 March 2020Bernd and Hilla Becher: Industrial Visions brings together 225 photographs by two of the most significant artists of the twentieth century. For over 50 years the Bechers collaborated on a project to document industrial structures across Europe and the USA. Their photographic inventory included winding towers, blast furnaces, cooling towers, gasometers, grain elevators, water towers and lime kilns. In 1965 the Bechers made their first visit to Wales and they returned in 1966 after receiving a British Council Fellowship. Based at a campsite in Glynneath, they explored the south Wales valleys and made an extensive series of photographs that now stand as monuments to a lost world of labour that were once central to the social fabric of industrial communities.
This exhibition presents some of the Bechers’ well-known typologies and individual photographs. It is the last exhibition Hilla Becher selected before her death in 2015 and has been curated in partnership with Dr Russell Roberts.
Panel Discussion and Film Screening
A distinguished panel of experts, chaired by Dr Russell Roberts (co-curator of Bernd and Hilla Becher: Industrial Visions) and including Max Becher (photographer and son of Bernd and Hilla Becher), Gabriele Conrath-Scholl (Director of Die Photographische Sammlung /SK Stiftung Kultur der Sparkasse KölnBonn) and Marianne Kapfer (director of The Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher) will discuss the Bechers‘ work in more detail, and how their time in Wales influenced their practice.
Followed be a special screening of The Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher (2012) by Marianne Kapfer.
25th of October 2019, 1 pm at the National Museum in Cardiff
