Bernd and Hilla Becher

I will get this started with my favorite photographers of all time, the team of Bernd and Hilla Becher. They began collaborating in school at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf, Germany). First exhibiting work in the 1960's, they eventually influenced most of the well known photographers coming out of germany when Bernd began teaching Photography at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Some of their students include: Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth.

There work examines industrial architecture through a vision of classifying and comparing one type of object.  Through their gridded imagery you find out how similarly things are constructed yet have subtle interesting differences.  Note how they photograph in black and white on cloudy days and compose their images from half height so that the images almost appear as architectural drawings.

I first saw their work in book form as an undergraduate: The water towers but later saw much of their work in person at the Museum of Modern Art.  They were one of a few photographers that showed in The New Topographics Exhibition at the George Eastman House in Rochester and signaled the start of a new trend in photography toward a deadpan aesthetic. Other artists in that exhibition include Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Frank Gohlke, and Stephen Shore.

One of my mentors in graduate school Greg Foster-Rice has researched and written extensively about The NewTopographics.  He recently published a book Reframing The New Topographics examining the influence that exhibition and the artists work has had on the art/photography world.