Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Banco de España Madrid VII 2000

Image caption
CANDIDA HöFER

Banco de España Madrid VII 2000

  • 2000
  • Chromogenic print on paper
  • 120 x 120 cm
  • Edition 2/6
  • Cat. F_29
  • Acquired in 2001
By:
Carlos Martín

Candida Höfer’s photography has been defined as the portrait of an ‘absent architecture’, as she often returns to public or semi-public spaces with no human presence. However, the absence of people does not mean that there is no mark or imprint of the people who have passed through those spaces. On observing these images, It is as if people are expected to arrive and undertake and their everyday functions in the context of the institutional apparatus that they represent. The series of photographs taken in the Banco de España in 2000 reveals that same interest, with the added fact that it is an institution seen as a place that is difficult to access, even though it is public, given the security requirements inherent in its function. Höfer chose three groups of spaces according to their accessibility: two which are public (the main staircase and the library), two with limited access (the old historical archive and the entrance to the lifts to the Gold Chamber) and one whose use has varied over time (the Lobby at Plaza Cibeles, the main public entrance to the building before the extension opened in 1936).

The photo of the entrance of the lifts leading to the strongroom is special. It can be interpreted as an architectural portrait of the unknown: the place eight floors below this anteroom that houses part of the country’s gold reserves. The fact that the large steel door is closed distances the photo from the marked perspective of the rest of the series and imposes a clear frontal presence whose brilliance seems, paradoxically, to be a negative. Central banks have been considered as the heirs of classical temples, which often housed the treasury of their city-State in their cella, so the photo is a portrait of a barred entrance to the sacred, to what is kept from public view and thus feeds the legend of the gold chamber holds in the collective imagination. It is not only a place where people are not photographed but also, literally, a picture of a space where humans do not usually tread except on rare occasions, under strictly controlled access. 

Carlos Martín

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Candida Höfer
Eberswalde 1944

Candida Höfer studied at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf from 1973 to 1976 and majored in Films with Ole John; from 1976 to 1982 she studied Photography with Bernd and Hilla Becher. The influence of the latter was decisive in Candida Höfer’s shift from a more social style of photography in the 1970s to a style characterised by the starkness, simplicity and objectivity of spaces of public utility and representation, usually in the form of strict frontal takes with balanced compositions, high definition and meticulous images. Höfer photographs architectural spaces inside buildings with a great burden of history, public functions and cultural value such as libraries, archives, monuments, museums, galleries, churches, banks, etc. when they are empty, showing places and times that are usually inaccessible to the public. That turns architecture into a tangible print of the immensity of the memory that they contain. She is consistent in her work and faithful to her essence, which has made her of the one of the leading representatives of the Düsseldorf School.

In 1975 she began to exhibit at solo shows and her work has been showcased at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany, 1993); the Kunstverein Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany, 1998); the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, United States, 2000); the Louvre (Paris, 2007); the Belem Cultural Centre (Lisbon, 2006); the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (Karlsruhe, Germany, 2008); Vigo Contemporary Art Museum (2010); the Andalusian Contemporary Art Centre (Seville, 2010); the Museum fur Neue Kunst (Friberg, Germany, 2011, 2012); and the Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf, Germany, 2013-2014). She has also taken part in events such as Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany, 2002), represented Germany together with Martin Kippenberger at the Venice Bienniale (2003) and was part of a group exhibition at the National Gallery of Art Washington D. C. (2016).

Roberto Díaz

 
«Architectures of Silence», Museo Municipal de Málaga (Malaga, 2001). «From Goya to our times. Perspectives of the Banco de España Collection», Musée Mohammed VI d'Art Moderne et Contemporain (Rabat, 2017-2018). «(UN)COMMON VALUES. Two Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art», National Bank of Belgium (Brussels, 2022).
Yolanda Romero & Isabel Tejeda De Goya a nuestros días. Miradas a la Colección Banco de España, Madrid & Rabat, AECID y FMN, 2017. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.