Bernd & Hilla Becher and Daniel Slater



Bernd & Hilla Becher - Wassertürme (Water Towers)

After looking at the work of Bernd & Hilla Becher and their modernist presentation of industrial aesthetics, compositional balance and a very bold yet simplistic photographic style are key features made obvious throughout their work. This style of photography has influenced many artists from the students of Bernd Becher to more contemporary artists all over the world. Some students of Bernd who have visibly taken inspiration include the likes of Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Candida Hofer and Elger Esser, consequently, I intend to research further these iconic artists and their indevidual yet similarly inspired work.

     The idea of compositional balance and bold simplicity can also be found within the work of Daniel Slater, a contemporary photographer and Goldsmiths graduate:

Joinery Shop Composition No. IV
Daniel Slater

Joinery Shop Compositions
Daniel Slater

This piece is very much a focus on such ideologies. Both the work of Bernd & Hilla Becher and Daniel Slater present buildings and building-like structures in physically and metaphorically 2D manners and question the structure's purpose.

     In conclusion i feel both pieces have indefinite modernist/postmodern sensibilities. I definitely enjoy the aesthetics of both and wish to take inspiration from their styling.

Lewis Baltz

Southwest Wall, Ware, Malcolm, and Garner, 16722 Hale, Irvine 
Lewis Baltz
1974

In an interview in which Lewis Baltz talks about his earlier work, he explains how he purposely intended to present the most typical and quotidian scenes in the most typical and quotidian way. His early work is very much a focus on conventional formalistic aesthetics and presented in an almost documentary way, however, a lack of colour (perpetuating this suggestion of mundanity) and visually pleasurable composition it allows these images of 'quotidian scenery' to be the focus of a certain unexpected beauty. I am very much inspired by the work of Lewis Baltz and intend to bring certain aspects of his modernist ideology and visuals into my own work.



Lewis Baltz is considered a pioneer and his work; key examples of the New Topographic movement. His work is very much a reaction towards the established popular landscape photography in America of that period and by presenting 'man-altered landscapes' in a particularly bold and stark manner, it greatly contrasts the typically romanticist style previously used. Romanticisation was a style in which the more conventional photographers used to depict the American landscapes, however, modernist photographers such as Baltz intended to subvert the stereotypical and instead, depicted brutal landscapes. An indefinite realism is prominent in such work; a style in which I aspire to follow and experiment with.