Candida Höfer. Memory

Candida Höfer (1944, Eberswalde) is one of the most prominent classics of contemporary photography, one of a dazzling cohort of Düsseldorf Kunstakademie graduates who studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher. A major international success came to her after she started taking photographs of empty public spaces to capture an elusive connection between people and places where they exist. She explains: “I wanted to capture how people behave in public buildings, so I started taking photographs of theatres, palaces, opera houses, libraries and the like. After some time, it became apparent to me that what people do in these spaces – and what these spaces do to them – is clearer when no one is present, just as an absent guest is often the subject of a conversation”.

For several decades Candida Höfer made architectural “portraits” of numerous treasure-houses across the world: the Louvre, Uffizi Gallery, the Royal Portuguese Library in Rio de Janeiro, La Scala opera-house in Milan, and many others. Along with the works of Martin Kippenberger, Höfer’s interiors represented Germany at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.

In the summer of 2014 the artist spent nearly two weeks working in St Petersburg and its suburbs. The photographs she created in Russia build seamlessly on the main architectural and functional preoccupations that so interest her: the visitors will see the Mariinsky Theatre and Yusupov Palace theatre, the palaces of Pavlovsk and Pushkin, the Russian National Library, and, of course, the halls of the Winter Palace itself. The exhibition “Candida Höfer. Memory” at the State Hermitage Museum is held within a framework of the Year of Contemporary Photography, and comprises 25 photographs from this new series that will be shown for the first time.

Each of the interiors Höfer captures exists in a number of socio-cultural and historical contexts simultaneously; their current look has been shaped over years of long cultural and architectural history. By drawing us into the inaccessible, strange and ‘private’ life of public spaces and breaking through our inherent difficulties in the perception of architecture, Candida Höfer’s photographs return to public spaces the aura of unique works of art.

The exhibition “Candida Höfer. Memory” is organized by the Contemporary art department of the State Hermitage Museum within the framework of “Hermitage 20/21” project.

The curator of the exhibition is Nadezda Sinyutina, Contemporary art department, State Hermitage Museum.

The exhibition is being held with the generous financial support of the General Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany in St. Petersburg, the Ben Brown Fine Arts Gallery, and Hotel Indigo. Informational support is being provided by our partners - Art Newspaper Russia, the Goethe-Institut and Pladis Television Company.