Candida's Camera

Can pictures today get any bigger? Candida Höfer's latest architectural photographs are so big that they no longer function like photographs—they begin to feel a bit like, well, actual rooms. Not only do her interior shots of the Palace Real in Madrid, the Stock Exchange in Calais, the Morgan Library in New York and other cultural sites measure at least 5 x 5 feet, but the fact that she empties these spaces of people makes them seem even larger. To say she leaves space for us to enter the picture is an understatement; she also tends to clear the seats, tables and aisles, and remembers to leave the lights on.

Such intimate details make Höfer more than just another member of the highly rated—I would say overrated—Düsseldorf group of photographers. While the other German photographers tend to supersize their pictures to chilling effects, often in the service of illustrating the excesses of global capitalism or industrialism, Höfer works to keep her images inviting no matter what the size. Perhaps that's the reason she was the last of the group to go large-format—she wanted it to work on her own terms. Put another way, there's a reason Höfer favors interiors, while Andreas Gursky prefers façades.

Take her 5 x 7-foot Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco Venezia, 2003, a spectacular shot of an ornate guild hall (now open as a museum) that is rich with Tintoretto paintings, marble colonnades and all manner of architectural detail. Had she chosen to take a picture of any single wall in the space, it would risk looking like a flat, formal study of the decorative elements. But Höfer opens up the room by offering, in a single image, a view of three colorful walls, an expanse of light-dappled floor and even a glimpse of the gilded ceiling, placing us well inside the museum doors. The grandeur is dimensional and within our reach.

One of the show's curators, Mary-Kay Lombino at California State University, compares Höfer's work to the abstract, light-drenched spaces of Los Angeles photographer Uta Barth. And this is certainly true of Höfer's pared-down pictures of modernist icons such as the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and Schindler House in Los Angeles. But as Lombino rightly points out, Barth tends to occupy the minimalist, reductivist end of the spectrum, while Höfer likes some content with her geometry. For Höfer's pictures have real, identifiable subjects, whether historic houses or state museums, and these places themselves are often filled with famous paintings or other objects of great cultural value.

In interviews, Höfer has said that she's attracted to the beauty and symmetry of her subjects: she likes libraries for the way the books stack up, the shapes they make, not for their social meaning. But after seeing her pictures of the Bibliothèque Nationale in France, the Morgan Library in New York and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New Haven, I don't think it's quite that simple. Her subjects are such famous cultural institutions that you can't escape their meaning. No matter how hard you try to look at the pictures as pure patterning or color, they still speak of our odd rituals for collecting, preserving, and celebrating scraps of culture. The books in her photographs may be closed, but they are still books, which makes Höfer more of a cultural historian than she'll ever admit.

—Jori Finkel



"Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence" is on view through April 17 at The University Art Museum, California State University, 1250 Bellflower Blvd. in Long Beach. (562) 985-5761. Web site: www.csulb.edu/org/uam