Candida Höfer German, b. 1944

Candida Höfer, born in Eberswalde, Germany, in 1944, is renowned for her large-scale photographs of uninhabited architectural interiors. Her work primarily focuses on cultural, institutional, public, and civic spaces, including libraries, museums, theatres, opera houses, universities, palaces, and zoos. The striking absence of human figures in her photographs imparts an eerie sense of grandeur, inviting contemplation of the architectural forms and the significance of the absent inhabitants in relation to public and private spaces. Rather than imposing a particular interpretation, Höfer presents these vacant public interiors with an objective, democratic, and almost encyclopaedic lens, capturing the pure essence and character of each room and its furnishings. Höfer’s meticulously composed photographs are unpretentious, precise, and serene, engaging with the pictorial poetics of absence and the psychological effect of architecture.

 

Höfer began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under the influential photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher in 1976. In 2003, Höfer represented Germany at the 50th Venice Biennale, and in 2002 she participated at Documenta 11. Her work has been shown at the Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Her photographs are part of major museum collections across the globe, including the Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.