Jessica Hawkins reviews Candida Höfer

Candida Hofer is a German artist that studied at the Art Academy of Dusseldorf from 1973-1982. She first began her studies in film and then moved into her first photography classes. In her beginning work she addressed the visual changes in German society brought about by migrant workers from Turkey which got her interested in the impact of the built environment on people. So she turned to public and semi-public spaces from iconic to the mundane architecture that we pass everyday without noticing. She came to the conclusion that paradoxically the impacts of architecture are most intensely present when people are not in the image. She examines the contradictions between intention and actual use, and historical change. They lead the viewer to examine and reflect upon what spaces do to us and what we do to spaces.