Beyond Geometry
Anna-Maria Becher photographs architecture at close range, focusing on the rhythm of a façade, the details that remain hidden from a distance and the interplay of light and shadow. Her interest in space is closely tied to questions of dwelling, privacy, belonging and safety, as well as to psychology and how the built environment affects us. In conversation with AH Magazine, she discusses how she chooses her subjects and approaches a space, when she decides to work in black and white and what can precede the final image.
What first drew you to monolithic architecture, and how did it become such an important part of your photographic work?
The starting point for my work was an interest in dwelling as a fundamental human condition, and in how space influences the individual and how different social concepts shape communal life. From the ideas of the Bauhaus to large-scale housing concepts, I am fascinated by the diversity of architectural approaches.
Exploring these ideas led to my interest in monolithic architecture and in buildings with a sculptural quality. For me, both have a visual pull all of their own.
When a building catches your eye, what makes you move closer and begin to see a photograph in it?
When a building catches my attention from a distance, I almost always feel the need to move closer. Exploring it on site is a crucial part of my process, as I am particularly drawn to hidden angles and nuances that only reveal themselves up close. I want to study the building, walk around the area and take in the atmosphere to develop a genuine feel for the space. Only through this direct approach can I capture the subject precisely, isolate a detail and allow the image itself to emerge.
In your biography, you draw a connection between your photographic work and psychology. How does that shape the way you look at space?
My background in psychology probably makes me especially aware that spaces are never emotionally neutral. I am interested in how the built environment affects our inner world long before we understand a building intellectually.
For me, buildings are fascinating interfaces between inside and outside, and between private and public space. Their structures speak to fundamental human needs for individuality, community, anonymity and a sense of shelter. Behind every balcony or window lies a world of its own, absorbed into the grid of the façade as a whole and often marked by subtle traces of time.
By reducing and isolating rhythms, repetitions and forms, I detach the architecture from its purely functional role. A façade or the solid mass of a building becomes a surface onto which moods are projected. This surface brings questions of belonging, distance and closeness back into play and, ideally, stirs the viewer’s own feelings.
Spaces are never emotionally neutral.
Could you choose one photograph from your architectural work and talk us through how it came about, from your first encounter with the place to the final image?
My photographs usually come about in one of two ways. Sometimes I respond spontaneously to a building that catches my attention while I am out. At other times, I plan trips to specific places or buildings. In Chișinău, for example, one of the sites I wanted to see was the Romanița Collective Housing Tower. Even when I know where I will be photographing, however, I never decide in advance how I will take the picture. I always leave that to intuition once I am there. With the building in Chișinău, as with others, I first look at it from the outside whenever possible. If I am allowed in, I go all the way to the top and work my way down step by step. This gives me a real sense of the space and its atmosphere. The final photograph emerges from the interplay between that direct experience and the spontaneous choice of framing.
How do you approach the black-and-white treatment of your images, and at what point do you know a photograph is finished?
I can usually tell as I take a photograph whether it will be in black and white or colour. When a scene works primarily through light, shadow, texture and graphic edges, I know immediately that it will be strongest in black and white. I prefer black and white for forms and structures because it emphasises their minimalism and keeps colour from drawing the eye, allowing the pure forms to stand on their own.
I generally try to frame the image in camera exactly as I want it to look in the end. In post-processing, I then reduce the photograph to its essential contrast and tonal range. A photograph feels finished to me when nothing distracts from the subject and the geometry appears calm and harmonious.
People are almost entirely absent from these architectural photographs, and in your statement you describe that absence as deliberate. What do you hope to achieve by allowing the architecture to stand alone in the frame?
The absence of people in my work is a very deliberate artistic choice. While people usually give an image an immediate sense of time and a narrative, their absence lends it a timeless quality.
I want to let the buildings speak for themselves and show that the architecture itself is the protagonist.
With no one in the frame, the viewer is not steered towards a predetermined mood but has room to bring their own emotions and interpretations to the image. The buildings can then be experienced entirely on their own terms.
Is there a photograph in your work with a story behind it that a viewer could never know from the image alone?
It is difficult to single out one photograph, as almost every image carries its own hidden story. At first glance, the viewer sees only the finished image, with its quiet graphic quality, but behind it often lie personal experiences. These might be spontaneous encounters with residents and the conversations that follow, which can suddenly reveal intriguing details about life in that place. There is also the journey itself: travelling to and arriving at a place I had planned to visit well in advance, finally experiencing a particular building for myself.
All these small moments remain invisible in the photograph, yet for me, they shape the story behind the image.
Anna-Maria Becher’s process is one of reduction: the framing tightens, the architecture takes on a presence of its own and colour gives way to black and white when form carries the image. Rhythm, geometry and stillness remain at the centre of a visual language of remarkable restraint.
