Candida Höfer, Photographer

Born in Eberswalde in 1944, Germany
Lives and works in Cologne

About

Galerie Yvon Lambert says about Candida Höfer’s body of work:

Ever since embarking on her first photographic projects in the early 1970s, Candida Höfer has been primarily interested in what could best be termed public space – interiors, such as libraries, foyers, museums, club houses or, more rarely, urban scenarios such as public squares, streets or zoos. Candida Höfer’s relationship to architecture is fully in keeping with the New Objectivity tradition. Her photographs of public spaces are almost sober and ascetic in feel – especially as she forgoes any spectacular staging of the locations. The emptiness is imbued with substance with a subtle attention to colour, and the prevailing silence instilled with a metaphysical quality. Even when Höfer’s photographs present significant works of renowned architects or designers, her incorruptible and consistently laconic approach means that the architectural mind in question takes a back seat to the photographer.

Why you should collect her?

She knows better than others how to extract the inner soul of an old public building to sort of freeze it on a photograph. Whether it is a museum, a castle, a church etc…, it is full of souvenirs and souls that are floating around. In the same time the artist enhances the architecture and its perspective which brings a “clinical” cold mood to the photography. The result is a paradoxical lecture of the photograph which is both cold/straight and full of the past time memories.

 

 

EDUCATION

1964-1968:
Studied at the Kölner Werkschule
1973-1982:
Studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
Film class of Ole John
Photography class of Bernd Becher

MAJOR COLLECTIONS

Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Kunsthalle Basel
Kunsthalle Hamburg;
Kunsthaus Bregenz
Museum Folkwang, Essen
Museum of Modern Art, New York
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis

Major private collectors include United States Senator Thomas Eagleton

DEALERS

Many dealers around the World, consult artnet.com https://www.artnet.com/artists/candida-h%C3%B6fer/artworks/2