This is a collection of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of coal mines, power plants, blast furnaces, grain elevators and silos in Europe and the United States. The German husband and wife team made a career of this topic; the pictures in this retrospective span are from the 1950′s to the 1990′s. Their style is distinctive: the buildings are stark, monumental, and there are no humans to be seen. There’s rarely a cloud in the sky, which makes the pictures look like the 19th century western landscapes of Timothy O’Sullivan or Carleton Watkins.
One of their Pennsylvania steel mill photographs was taken from a vantage point very close to where Walker Evans took his “Bethlehem graveyard and steel mill” photo. The two pictures are an interesting contrast: Evans’ photo is dramatic and nearly abstract, the Bechers’ photo is flat and “deadpan”.