Typologies

The best way to understand a typology is to look at the work of the Bechers, and the many thousands of photos they made and organized into sets.

The Becher Method.

These paragraphs are quoted from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2022 catalog Bernd & Hilla Becher (ISBN: 9781588397553).

The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher changed the course of twentieth-century photography. Working together as a rare artist couple, they systematically focused on a single subject-the disappearing industrial architecture of the West that fueled modernization and two world wars-and then devised a uniform compositional approach that made each example a modular entry in an archive of what they termed ‘anonymous sculpture.’

This grid is from “Gravel Plants",” 1988-2001.

The Bechers were unequivocally artists, not scientists, but they used an almost Linnean system of classification-an important eighteenth-century precedent for their work—in which each photograph is treated like a botanical or zoological specimen. This idiosyncratically standardized methodology allowed for comparative analyses of structures that the Bechers presented most often in grids of four, six, nine, fifteen, twenty-one, or, at their grandest, thirty photographs. They described the formal arrangements of photographs as ‘typologies’.

What I am doing is creating a typology of denim.

Other Typologies.

Since the Bechers, multitudes of photographic typologies have been made. Here are two:

German Portraits by Boris Mikhailov

quoting from the website Photo Pedagogy:

Nearly a century after August Sander's portraits of German society, the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov created a series of pictures of the amateur actors in a German theatre company in the town of Braunschweig. Shot in profile against a black background, the photographer makes reference not only to Sander's typol0gical study but also to Theodor Piderit's Principles of Mimic and Physiognomy, published in Braunschweig in 1858 and also to Hitler's interest in eugenics; Hitler became a German citizen in Braunschweig in 1932. The profile portrait also encourages the viewer to make formal comparisons between the sitters. Mikhailov's portraits and those of August Sander were exhibited together in 2012.

Paris Tree Shadows by Michael Wolf

quoting again from the website Photo Pedagogy:

Michael Wolf's early career as a photo journalist is perhaps evident in his various studies of urban life. He documents repetitive features of the urban landscape, clearly influenced by the deadpan approach of the Dusseldorf School and the New Topographics photographers. However, Wolf's approach appears more concerned with the symbolic role played by mundane items such as his 'bastard chairs' which suggest the density of the urban environment of Hong Kong and the human ingenuity of its inhabitants. Wolf often uses a strict typological approach, as in his series '100 x 100', repeating the same vantage point. However, Wolf is always interested in the individuality of his human subjects and the tremendous visual variety of the interiors in which they live. He often displays his images in groups or in series to draw attention to repetitive phenomena. There is humour and poetry in these groupings. A good example of this is the beautiful and subtle "Paris Tree Shadows' series:

‘by using a diverse array of perspectives and visual approaches, Wolf uses his camera to reveal the human energy that flows through the contemporary city. In so doing, he establishes himself not only as a photographer of the urban structure, but of the myriad ways in which people adapt to and reconfigure this rapidly changing environment, thereby providing us with a fascinatingly intricate portrait of life in the city.’