In the mid `70s, a group of young photographers were studying at theKunstakademie Düsseldorf. Their professors were Bernd and Hiller Becher, a couple who had gained fame for taking sharp b&w photographs of industrial archetypes long before it was fashionable to do so. The Becher took pictures like passionate and determined collectors, treating images of water towers, grain elevators, warehouses and other industrial buildings as if they were butterflies that had to be aligned with the utmost care in a catalog. They portrayed the mundane with an unprejudiced and clinical eye.
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