The Bechers' Industrial Lexicon: in their first full-length interview ever, Bernd and Hilla Becher talk about the collaborative project that has occupied them for more than four decades: photographing and classifying the industrial structures that are even now vanishing from the modern landscape - Interview

Art in America, June, 2002 by Ulf Erdmann Ziegler

HB: At that time, one was closer with artists than with exhibition people--not to mention dealers.

UEZ: Where did you meet LeWitt and Andre--in America or here?

BB: Andre was often in Dusseldorf, Richard Long, too. They were both very interested in our stuff.

HB: But the world of photographers, back then, rejected our photography totally. It was regarded as "not artistic." It was appreciated all the more by the other side--the nonphotographers.

UEZ: Didn't you feel a bit lonely with your precise pictorial esthetic in the company of the Conceptualists?

HB: We were on our own in that. But we weren't lonely. We found it completely adequate.

BB: We had to make a certain effort with respect to the equipment. Because we told ourselves that we wanted to take these objects with us, so to speak. Reduce them photographically ...

HB: Tidy craft.

BB: ... so that the details could be recognized. Snapshots had no meaning for us.

HB: That wasn't acceptable.

BB: For this reason we weren't satisfied with the 2 1/2-by-3 1/2-inch negatives and changed to 5-by-7.

UEZ: Do you think that the people who pushed Minimalism and Conceptual art at the time even saw your photographic effort?

HB: Whether or not they saw the effort, I don't know. But in any case they saw that it was right, that the work was how it had to be.

BB: There was also criticism. People said that it was completely pointless to produce picture compositions. You could just as well tie the camera to your leg, and click the shutter every now and again.

UEZ: This sort of standardized view of a functional photography seems to be a common denominator among artists.

BB: That's how it was then. People wanted to get away from composition.

UEZ: Allan Sekula or Dan Graham, for example, are actually interested in the connections between objects, but don't really give much thought to how the objects are presented photographically; on the contrary, their art is characterized by the fact that they don't take photography seriously.

HB: Even these people accepted that. Doug Huebler, for example, took a picture from the car every so many minutes; a concept. Or Ed Ruscha ...

BB: He was already more precise.

HB: He became more and more precise with time. Every Building on Sunset Strip is pretty much shot from the hand; the gas stations were more correct technically.

BB: Especially the parking lots. Then it was essential. You can't show that sort of alignment totally askew, otherwise the specific quality of this sequence of lines painted on asphalt is completely lost.

UEZ: It's true, the parking lots were shot with the help of a professional photographer, from a helicopter.

HB: I believe that for many artists, photography was an aid, but shooting from the hand was not the principle. They didn't make an esthetic out of it.

UEZ: when your work first started to appear and was classified as Conceptual art, did you have a secure visual language which you knew would be viable over time? Or could you have arrived at completely different forms of presentation, or made your photographs the basis for videos?