Candida Höfer

Candida Höfer was born at Eberswalde in Germany in 1944 and studied at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, first film under Ole John and then, from 1976, photography under Bernd Becher, among the first of his students to work in colour. An early series photographed Turkish families living in German cities. The work she is known for, made since the late 1970s, is of public and semi-public interiors — libraries, museums, theatres, archives, banks, lecture halls and palaces — photographed frontally, symmetrically and almost always empty, so the architecture and the order it imposes become the subject rather than the people it was built for. She represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2003 with Martin Kippenberger.

The large prints are chromogenic, made in small editions and often in more than one size as separate editions, so title, dimensions and edition number together identify the work. Several interiors of the same building were often photographed on a single visit, and the exact title matters when identifying a print. At these sizes the practical risks are surface scratches, dents, fading and damage to the mount. Smaller prints and the earlier work of the 1970s and 1980s are a separate part of the output. Signature, title, date and edition are normally on a label on the reverse, and the studio and her galleries hold the edition records.