Candida Hofer

In majestic large-format color photography, Candida Höfer captures the psychological residue left behind in empty public and institutional spaces such as libraries, zoos, and opera houses. Höfer meticulously composes her shots, positioning herself symmetrically either in the center of rooms or along a diagonal that best reveals the space's internal architecture. These spaces, often absent of or scarcely populated by human figures give each image an eerie monumentality.

 "Spaces may or may not invite the image-if they do, they mostly do it with their spatial layers of time," she said of her work. "It is then the image that takes the place of the space; the image in its own right." Höfer studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Thomas Struth and Axel Hütte. 

The Becher's approach to photography as a conceptual tool in producing an archive of places, had a profound effect on Höfer and her peers. The artist currently lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Her works are held in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.