Framework Houses (ISBN 0262024993)

Early Bechers at their most lyrical:
With the recent interest in German wunderkind photographers Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth (known collectively as 'Struffsky') its particularly telling to see early work by their mentors Bernd and Hilla Becher. Framework Houses is among their earliest work, with the bulk of it dating from the early sixties through the seventies. The virtually patented Becher formula of typology is already in place (back at a time when Robert Adams was still a struggling English major): same flat viewing angle, precisionist approach and shadowless light. Taken individually, the photos are deadpan documents of an architectural type, but the strength of the Becher's work has always lay in the collective. The effect of seeing page after page of images so similar, yet individual, is an astonishing rendering of a past industrial age. This rendering is underlined in the last section of the book where the images are grouped in the famous Becher grids. Where this body departs from their other series of factories, water towers, et al, is that while the houses are part of an industrial region, they aren't industrial structures. Other series describe the 'what' of function, but these domestic forms also include a possible 'who' of the people that reside there. An interest in pattern is evident, too. The graphic rendering of shingle siding or dark timber against light stucco is a surprisingly lyrical play on theme and variation, where the grid of halftimbers begins to deviate from strict rationality. In the overall collective, this line quality becomes almost as giddy as a Paul Klee etching. This series is likely the least typical of the Becher's work, but in my opinion, is the most compelling.