The Beauty of Overlooked Scenery: Hilla and Bernd Becher's Photography

For the second activity of the fifth lesson of the History of Narrative, I am supposed to find an artist whose work can be considered as "travel narrative" - that is, artwork that deals with concepts of travel and tourism. In this case, I would like to talk about the ideas of the souvenir and memory making in their work Water Towers.

The activity proper:

"Choose one artist whose work deals with travel narrative. Analyze and critique one work of this artist.

What is his or her perspective of the place travelled to? Does it enforce or challenge traditional views? What is the aim of the work?

What strategies does the artist use to put forth his/her concept?"

The artwork came about from the couple's travels across a number of years in different locations in Europe and the United States. One important aspect of travel and travel narrative is to take photographs of experiences and places. We do this to remember them and to craft personality into our own personal travel narratives. Very often these places are picturesque and iconic so as to bolster this very point of remembering.

However, I feel what is interesting about their work is that instead of taking photographs of traditionally beautiful scenery or famous architecture and buildings, their photograph subjects are of overlooked and mundane architecture like these water towers. By doing so, they subvert the traditional idea of travel and tourism by taking photographs of "uninteresting" things - things that don't need or people don't care to commemorate.

By doing so, I feel the artists are challenging us, the viewers, to examine and notice these structures. They want us to consider something other than the picturesque and important sights of travelling and tourism and realize there is beauty everywhere.

Thus, I would say that an important concept in their work is to give voice to overlooked architecture, particularly that of industrial architecture and encourage viewers to engage deeply with the forms of their subject matter. Their travel narrative then I would say is concerned first and foremost with these formal aesthetic qualities in similar structures throughout their travels and how perhaps they weave meaning through their commonalities.

I feel one strategy they used to promote the forms of their subjects was to display their final outcome as photographs in a group. The photographs are intentionally taken in a very documentative style featuring their subjects in their entirety and in the same exact angle. Alone, the structures probably would not look all that exciting but by arranging them together in this 3x3 grid, there is this forced inevitability on the viewers' part to look and compare the different structures displayed side-by-side. Doing so would no doubt either draw viewer attention to the common aspects and aesthetic and functional similarities they share or at the very least make them question the purpose of the artists' categorization and sequencing.

Furthermore, the photographs were purposely taken only in the same type of cloudy weather. By doing so, they wanted to avoid shadows. The final product has an expressionless and almost timeless quality in their backdrop. This too challenges the fundamental aspect of travel narrative: the accountability of dates and times that is important in remembering events in our travels.

Last but not least, though all previous points were about how their work challenges traditional views on what is important to the concept of travelling, I do feel that one traditional view their work does encourage is the importance of preservation. By taking photographs of our travels and peoples and places, we do so because we want to preserve (to remember) them. It is not so different in Hilla and Bernd's work only except in the fact that there is a greater and sole importance on industrial architecture.