Candida Höfer in Mexiko

Abstract

In 2014, Candida Höfer (b. Eberswalde, Germany, 1944; lives and works in Cologne) traveled to Mexico, visiting the eight cities Ciudad de México, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Oaxaca, Puebla, Tepotzotlán, Tlacochahuaya, and Tonantzintla, where she photographed old and new libraries, theaters and opera houses, churches and museums, poorhouses and palaces. Most of the pictures are organized by symmetry along a central axis, a characteristic feature of her art. If these works suggest her training with Hilla and Bernd Becher, who taught photography in Düsseldorf―she is now the best-known of their students―others show a "new" Candida Höfer: old-fashioned offices, weather-beaten walls, and simple stores as well as a few expertly captured details of façades, floors, and interiors. With an essay by the Mexican historian and economist José N. Iturriaga.