In April, Beijing German Culture Center (Goethe Institute) was honored to invite German architecture photographer Hilla Becher and his spouse to visit China for the first time. By means of film shooting, dialogue and showcase, the Bechers conducted exchange with Chinese photographic circle with great interest at heart, shared their individual experience and artistic ideal, and held photography workshop in Caochangdi Photo Season.

Bernd & Hilla Becher from Germany are influential vanguards and instructors of concept photography. Typlogies practiced by this couple are characterized with deadpan, and along with their own works and their students’ works, a powerful Dusseldorf School of Photography was established to lead in the methodology, technical aesthetics and style trends of contemporary photography.

In 1960s, their main projects are heavy industry. At that time the whole heavy industry compounds were destined to be closed or demolished. This couple made a complete album of the old-fashioned industrial compounds in UK, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. In their first book consisting of 7 chapters titled Anonymous Sculptures: A Typology of Technical Construction, Hill Becher said, “What we have done is nothing but tell the history. We bring them into this book and enable them to tell their own history”.