Water Towers

Rating:
Summary: Stark, beautiful industrial photography
Review: The Bechers have been documenting the aging world of the industrial age for decades. Their beautiful, unadorned and repetitious images are a mirror held up to the paradoxical existence of mankind's seemingly endless capacity for building, improving, compositing, developing, using, wasting and ultimately discarding the planet we live on. The Becher's photography allows these relics to speak for themselves without politicizing or disenfranchisement. These watertowers, photographed throughout Europe and North America, appear in formal portraiture in frame after frame, page after page, relentlessly. There are hundreds of them... And though the end result is one of post-modern ubiquity, the induvidual frames, when studied, unfold each watertower's unique story - whether built of cement or iron, tall or short, set on field stones or soaring on towering pylons. They attest an odd dignity, an assertion that they have their rightful place in this world despite their relative obsolescence. A beautiful book, challenging yet very formal, evocative and indicative without being biased or self-conscious. The Bechers show us an unfiltered, clear view into a dying part of our culture's heritage - that of the man-made industrial landscape.

Rating:
Summary: Repetition and Typology
Review: These are beautiful photos of seemingly mundane structures--parts of our landscape, ignorable yet indispensible to our lives.
The Bechers photographed these architectural objects from the same position (slightly elevated, and just above the vantage point an observer would have) and under the same lighting conditions (usually overcast skies, which blends the texture of the surfaces into the sky). The clinical feeling which initially results quickly dissolves as the details loom large. An excellent work of photography and a typology of industrial practice.

Rating:
Summary: Barren Beauty
Review: This book will be an inspiration to anyone who can recognize beauty in the most unconventional surroundings. The subject matter chosen by the artists fills the picture plane with a sense of isolation. The landscape, weather, and tower all blend to create a lifeless industrial portrait. No individual is evident in any of the photographs, yet we understand that man had his hand in all the photographer is capturing. The water towers were all created by humans however we are intentionally removed from the portraits to allow the viewer to focus on the architectural beauty of these structures. This book is a wonderful visual presentation of the water tower and it's many forms.

Rating:
Summary: Barren Beauty
Review: This book will be an inspiration to anyone who can recognize beauty in the most unconventional surroundings. The subject matter chosen by the artists fills the picture plane with a sense of isolation. The landscape, weather, and tower all blend to create a lifeless industrial portrait. No individual is evident in any of the photographs, yet we understand that man had his hand in all the photographer is capturing. The water towers were all created by humans however we are intentionally removed from the portraits to allow the viewer to focus on the architectural beauty of these structures. This book is a wonderful visual presentation of the water tower and it's many forms.