Dusseldorf School of Photography

The Dusseldorf School of Photography refers to a group of photographers who studied at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in the mid 1970s under the influential photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher

Thomas Struth
*Shinju-ku (Skyscrapers), Tokyo 1986* (1986)
Tate

© Thomas Struth

Known for their rigorous devotion to the 1920s German tradition of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), the Bechers’ photographs were clear, black and white pictures of industrial archetypes (pitheads, water towers, coal bunkers).

Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth modified the approach of their teachers by applying new technical possibilities and a personal and contemporary vision, while retaining the documentary method their tutors propounded.

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Photography

Photography refers to the process or practice of creating a photograph – an image produced by the action of light on a light-sensitive material
Documentary photography

Documentary photography is a style of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage
New Objectivity

New Objectivity is the English translation of 'Neue Sachlichkeit', a German modern realist movement of the 1920s, described by one of its founders as ‘new realism bearing a socialist flavour’

explore this term

Left Right

Cruel and tender

Carter Ratcliff

What is the place of documentary photography in art? This is the central question raised by Tate's first major exhibition devoted to photography, which includes an axis of the most highly acclaimed American and German image-makers of the past century. Carter Ratcliff looks at the evolution of a photographic practice that occupies the troublesome borderland between hard fact and enigmatic contingency.
The long look

Michael Collins

Bernd and Hilla Becher have spent their life together photographing the unintended beauty that can be found in industrial structures. Michael Collins profiles the winners of 2002’s prestigious erasmus prize for European culture.
The landscape in contemporary photography: From the sublime to the ridiculous

Speakers are Thomas Struth, Penelope Umbrico, Massimo Vitali and Lauren Marsolier and Mishka Henner. The panel is chaired by William Ewing, Director of Curatorial Projects at Thames & Hudson.
The Photographic Comportment of Bernd and Hilla Becher

Blake Stimson

Bernd and Hilla Becher first began their project of systematically photographing industrial structures in the late 1950s. This paper, first given at a conference at Tate Modern, investigates the rhythmic continuity of the comportment or bearing toward the world that they have made into an epic form and that has gained broader influence in the work of their successful students.
MicroTate 34

Edward Platt , Sasha Devas , Elain Harwood and Wilhelm Sasnal

Edward Platt, Sasha Devas, Elain Harwood and Wilhelm Sasnal reflect on a work in the Tate collection

selected artists in the collection

Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher

1931–2007, 1934–2015
Andreas Gursky

born 1955
Candida Höfer

born 1944
Thomas Ruff

born 1958

selected artworks in the collection

Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher Gas Tanks

1965–2009
Thomas Ruff Goetz Collection

1994
Andreas Gursky Thebes, West

1993