Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings

A photographic encyclopaedia of industrial buildings and plants of unsurpassed importance, gradually compiled over more than forty years of artistic endeavour.

Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings brings together a representative selection from the broad range of subjects chosen by the Bechers in what are characteristic ‘portraits’ of the objects in question. Subjects include cooling towers, water towers and winding towers, blast furnaces, lime kilns, gravel plants, grain elevators, gas tanks, and even details of the interiors of these industrial edifices.

Rendered timeless by the camera and isolated from their original, often perplexingly complex surroundings, they appear as monumental symbols of their own history – with all the stylistic diversity of great masterpieces of architecture.