Candida Höfer

CANDIDA HÖFER (Germany, 1944).
"Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf," 2012.
Photograph, c-print, copy 97/100.
Signed and numbered on the back.
Measurements: 30 x 45.5 cm; 48 x 63 cm (frame).

This majestic color photograph of the interior of the "German Opera House on the Rhine" (Düsseldorf) captures, as is usual in Höfer's photographic art, the psychological residue deposited in public and institutional spaces when they are shown empty. Höfer meticulously composes his shots, strategically placing himself in the center of rooms or on a diagonal that best reveals the internal architecture of the space. She prefers places that contain an institutional history, embodied in their own architecture, such as libraries, museums and theaters.

Candida Höfer began her career in 1968 working as a portrait photographer for various newspapers and, from 1970, as an assistant to Werner Bokelberg. Later, between 1973 and 1982, she attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, first studying film with Ole John, and later photography with Bernd Becher. Together with Thomas Ruff, Höfe was Becher's first student to use color photography, showing her work in slide form. She began making her famous interiors of public buildings in 1979, still during her student period. Eventually fame would come to him thanks to his series of photographs focusing on the lives of immigrant workers in Germany. Höfer's work is part of the tradition of German photographers directly inherited from the conceptual aesthetics and the teachings of Bernd and Hilla Becher from the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, who readapted the original project of the New Objectivity to adopt a unique way of facing the world. Following the working method initiated by their teachers, their photographs show an almost ethnographic interest in the multiplicity of forms of representation of contemporary culture, relating in a very particular way to the scenarios where society moves and knowledge develops. Höfer's are interiors of buildings, preferably for public use such as museums, churches, theaters or opera houses, archives and libraries, which are photographed when they have ceased all activity and are empty. Specializing in large formats, her photographs are taken from a classic frontal angle, or they seek a sharp diagonal that organizes the composition. The artist tends to photograph her scenes from a high viewpoint, so that the wall in the background is centered in relation to the final image. She held her first solo exhibition in 1975 at the Konrad Fischer Gallery in Düsseldorf. Since then, Höfer's work has been exhibited in leading museums around the world, such as the Kunsthalle in Basel, Hamburg and Bern, the Louvre in Paris, the Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, the MoMA in New York, the Power Plant in Toronto, the Kunsthaus in Bregenz, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne or, in our country, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo. Likewise, in 2002 he participated in Documenta 11, and in 2003 he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale, together with Martin Kippenberger. On the other hand, between 1997 and 2000 she combined her artistic practice with teaching, which she did at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe. She is currently represented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin, the Kunsthalle in Nuremberg, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Trento, the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago, the Fundación Telefónica in Madrid and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among other public and private collections.