Michel Nuridsany on the Silent Sculptures of Bernd and Hilla Becher

In an article from artpress n°45 (Feb. 1981), critic Michel Nuridsany examines the photographic work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who participated in the 1980 exhibition 'Ils se disent peintres, ils se disent photographes' at ARC/Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Nuridsany argues that the Bechers' rigorous, almost austere photographs are defined by a core of silence, rejecting the 'aura' described by Walter Benjamin. He places them in the lineage of Eugène Atget and August Sander rather than the New Objectivity photographers of 1920s Germany. The Bechers' subjects—disused factories, water towers, blast furnaces—are isolated from context and presented as anonymous sculptures. The artists describe their work as 'neutralized,' aiming to 'memorize the chain as completely as possible of the different aspects of industrial buildings.' They consider themselves witnesses to the industrial era. Nuridsany connects their approach to the impersonal pronoun in Kafka and the exploration of the identical and similar in contemporary art, citing Christian Boltanski and Richard Prince. The article is part of a three-part series on photography in artpress from 1980-81, echoing the dossier in issue 483-484.