![\"\"](\"http:\/\/we-english.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/t01922_9.jpg\" "\\"t01922_9\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nPitheads<\/span>, 1974<\/em> \u00c2\u00a9 The Bechers. All taken at collieries in Britain. From the Tate Collection<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bernd Becher was born August 20, 1931, in Siegen, Germany. He studied painting and lithography at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Stuttgart from 1953 to 1956 and studied typography at the Staatliche Kunstakademie D\u00c3\u00bcsseldorf from 1957 to 1961. Hilla Becher was born Hilla Wobeser on September 2, 1934, in Potsdam, Germany. She studied painting at the Kunstakademie D\u00c3\u00bcsseldorf, where she met Bernd Becher. The two artists first collaborated in 1959 and were married in 1961. They began working as freelance photographers, concentrating on industrial photography.<\/p>\n From their first series of photographs of water towers, the artists have not veered from architectural portraiture subjects, using both industrial and domestic structures such as gas tanks, silos, framework houses, and the like. They were given their first gallery show in 1963 at the Galerie Ruth Nohl in Siegen and by 1968 were exhibiting in the United States as well as in European cities outside Germany.<\/p>\n You can see a portfolio of their images here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bernd Becher died in 2007, and you can read an obituary on The Guardian here<\/a>.<\/p>\n