Candida Höfer’s oeuvre has developed over five decades and is part of today’s photographic avant-garde. Her large-format works depict public and semi-public spaces like historical libraries, archives, storage facilities, palaces, museums, opera houses, zoos and other buildings – places where people meet and communicate, places of memory and knowledge, relaxation and recreation. However, her images also focus on architectural details like ventilation shafts and wall structures. Höfer is interested in how people are steered, directed or held back by architecture and in how spaces accommodate the visitors they receive.
The twelve casts of Auguste Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais, installed in museums and sculpture gardens around the world, prompted the photographer to shoot a series of images, which she presented in 2002 at documenta11 in Kassel. She was interested in the contradictory nature of the spaces in which the casts are now shown; even during Rodin’s lifetime, his “heroic monument” was a source of controversy. The dialectics of tradition and modernity, representation and usage, are clearly evident in Höfer’s pictures.
Work complexes like series on Dresden (1999–2002), Weimar (2004–06), the Louvre (2006), Portugal (2006), Bologna (2007) and Berlin (2020–22) – along with the neo-baroque interior of Komische Oper and the Neue Nationalgalerie as tokens of Modernism in Berlin – are given specific geographical titles. However, her focus is not on the cultural differences between the spatial structures that have emerged over the centuries; instead, Höfer investigates architectural concepts and how they have been used over time to manipulate human experience. The artist herself describes her works not as architectural photos but as portraits of spaces.
An accompanying publication will include texts by Karin Sander and Matthias Sauerbruch.