Candida Höfer’s oeuvre has developed over five decades and is part of today’s photographic avant-garde. Her large-format works depict public and semi-public spaces like historical libraries, archives, storage facilities, palaces, museums, opera houses, zoos and other buildings—places where people meet and communicate, places of memory and knowledge, relaxation and recreation. However, her images also focus on architectural details like ventilation shafts and wall structures. Höfer is interested in how people are steered, directed or held back by architecture and in how spaces accommodate the visitors they receive. The twelve casts of Auguste Rodin’s ›The Burghers of Calais‹, installed in museums and sculpture gardens around the world, prompted the photographer to shoot a series of images, which she presented in 2002 at documenta11 in Kassel. She was interested in the contradictory nature of the spaces in which the casts are now shown; even during Rodin’s lifetime, his ›heroic monument‹ was a source of controversy. The dialectics of tradition and modernity, representation and usage, are clearly evident in Höfer’s pictures. Other work complexes like series on ›Dresden (1999–2002)‹, ›Weimar (2004—06)‹, ›Louvre (2006)‹, ›Portugal (2006)‹, ›Bologna (2007)‹ and ›Berlin (2021—22)‹—along with the neo-baroque interior of Komische Oper and the Neue Nationalgalerie as tokens of Modernism in Berlin—are given specific geographical titles. However, her focus is not on the cultural differences between the spatial structures that have emerged over the centuries; instead, Höfer investigates architectural concepts and how they have been used over time to manipulate human experience. The artist herself describes her works not as architectural photos but as portraits of spaces.
Candida Höfer (b. 1944 in Eberswalde) lives in Cologne. After training at the Schmülz-Huth photo studio in Cologne (1963–64), she studied under Arno Jansen at the Kölner Werkschulen (1964–68) and set up her photographic practice in Hamburg. Having been accepted into Ole John’s film class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1973, she switched to photography in 1976 and remained a student of Bernd Becher until 1982. In 2002, she exhibited at documenta11 in Kassel, and in 2003, she represented Germany at the 50th Venice Biennale alongside a posthumous presentation of Martin Kippenberger’s work. Höfer received the Cologne Fine Art Award in 2015; the Sony World Photography Award’s Outstanding Contribution to Photography in 2018; and the Hommage award from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 2020. Höfer’s first solo exhibition in 1975 was at the Konrad Fischer Galerie in Düsseldorf. Since then, she has realised numerous solo shows and projects worldwide, and her works can be found in a variety of public and private collections both in Germany and abroad.