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Trajectory

Candida Höfer was educated at the Werkkunstschule of Cologne before enrolling, in 1973, in the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf where she stayed until 1982. While at this institution, Candida Höfer first studied cinema with Ole John, specialising in photography in 1976, under Bernd and Hilla Becher. She is currently considered one of the most representative members, along with Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Ruff, of the New School of German Photography, which emerged in the late eighties. Between 1997 and 2000, Candida Höfer was a teacher at the Hochschule für Gestaltunt de Karlruhe.

Following the work method initiated by her mentors, her photographs demonstrate an almost ethnographic interest in the multiplicity of forms of presentation in contemporary culture, with a special emphasis on the stages where society and knowledge are developed, these being the main themes of her photography since the decade of the eighties. Throughout her career, this artist has increasingly focused her production on capturing different types of public or semi-public interiors, such as book shops, palaces, museums, offices, universities, libraries cafeterias, churches, sports complexes and zoos.

Her compositions, generally in medium-scale format, are carefully considered and simple, recalling the minimalist tradition and rendering clean and neutral images in which the artificial lighting of the spaces usually combines with the sunlight filtering through the windows (Kunthaus Bregenz I, 1999). The artist does not retouch the images; the places are portrayed just as they are. The photograph captions convey this same idea of compositional clarity: with brevity and precision, she identifies the space or the building represented, its function, its location and the date the photograph was taken. The result is the creation of a calm and simple photographic atmosphere, very attractive for the spectator. Höfer neither aims to aggrandise nor to belittle the spaces but merely to capture their historical significance, however slight and private that may be, in the present.

Despite having admitted on several occasions to her fascination with human behaviour, in Candida Höfer's photographs, there is never any trace of it. The artist thus portrays the empty rooms, always from the point of view of the hypothetical spectator, whereby the spaces seem ready to accept their customary occupants. Early images such as Liverpool from 1968 or Türken in Deuschtland from 1980, in which there were some isolated personages within view, are long behind her now. The artist has recognised that her intention, through this "dehumanising" manoeuvre, is to seize the aura and the revealing nature of the spaces represented. In this context, the objects seem to magically rise above their habitual space, abandoning the physical limits of representation to display the traces deposited by time, while simultaneously demonstrating how individuals of our time build and equip their edifices. A. S.