Candida Höfer. Düsseldorf

Since her studies (1976-1982), Höfer has kept a respectful distance to the motifs that she finds in her immediate environs or on her countless trips, whether these are single objects, architectural spaces or people. She preserves the dignity of what she photographs, such as is made clear in the portraits she staged of people from Liverpool in 1968 or Turkish guest workers in Germany
from the 1970s. The photographs of public spaces almost devoid of people—interiors, libraries, museums or entrance halls—are marked by cool objectivity and the precise capturing of details as well as of the transforming systems that organize the architecture. Whereby the use and incidence of light lends the single objects an almost painterly quality, an indeed magical presence.

This publication, of new and older work from the past four decades, is devoted especially to the works that she produced at sites in Düsseldorf since her time at the Arts Academy and especially since 2011.