Candida Höfer is one of the world's most renowned German photographers. Like Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff, she was a student of Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and a key figure in the Düsseldorf School of Photography. She studied there from 1973 to 1982. She became known for her precisely composed photographs of the interiors of public buildings. She depicts large-format, deserted halls in museums, opera houses, theaters, churches, zoos, and libraries—places of encounter, communication, memory, and knowledge, but also of relaxation and recreation. The artist sees her works not as architectural photographs, but as portraits of spaces whose function and cultural significance become visible.
Candida Höfer's oeuvre, which has grown over five decades, is considered part of the contemporary photographic avant-garde. Her works have been featured in important national and international solo and group exhibitions at leading institutions, such as the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf in 1991, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 1992, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 1993, and the St. Louis Art Museum in 1997. The Cologne-based photographer has received numerous awards for her work, most recently the prestigious Käthe Kollwitz Prize from the Berlin Academy of Arts in 2024.
The exhibition Candida Höfer. Photographs presents a broad overview of the artist's work. Breathtaking large-format portraits of large halls will be on display, as will more recent photo series in which Candida Höfer explores, for example, makeshift lighting fixtures.
The exhibition is being compiled in cooperation with the artist especially for the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt and will be presented in the immediate vicinity of the »Block Beuys«.