Candida Höfer: The Order of Beauty

28 Nov 2024-1 Feb 2025

Overview

Ben Brown Fine Arts is delighted to present Candida Höfer: The Order of Beauty, an exhibition showcasing a selection of works by the esteemed German photographer Candida Höfer at the London gallery. This exhibition marks twenty years since Höfer’s debut with the gallery, celebrating a longstanding and fruitful collaboration that began with the seminal 2004 show, Libraries. As one of the first artists to join Ben Brown Fine Arts, Höfer returns for her thirteenth solo exhibition at the gallery, affirming her enduring significance in contemporary photography and the evolving depth of her artistic practice.

The exhibition features an extraordinary assemblage of photographs depicting iconic libraries, theatres, museums, and palaces – treasured symbols of universal culture and human achievement – offering a journey through cultural landmarks across Italy, Great Britain, France, Spain, and Russia. Her large-format works capture the beauty and historical gravitas of these institutions, which, even in their emptiness, pulse with the echoes of countless stories, memories, and silent dialogues between the past and the present. As we traverse these images, we are invited to engage with the history, form, and function of these enduring structures, to feel the weight of centuries pressing against our gaze. Each photograph becomes a poignant reminder of the cultural memory that lives within these walls, challenging us to consider the role these magnificent sites play not merely as backdrops to human activity, but as active participants in shaping our shared consciousness.