How Hilla Becher found beauty and dignity in industrial decline

The German photographer spent a lifetime, with her husband Bernd, recording the industrial structures that once defined the western landscape. It was a devotion that inspired generations of artists

It feels strange to speak of Hilla Becher singly. Even after her death this week, she is so intertwined in the creative dynamic that was the Bechers. Alongside her late husband, Bernd, she created a visual signature as identifiable as any in the entire history of photography.

Over 40 years the pair used an 8x10 large-format camera to document buildings that defined the industrial landscape: blast furnaces, water towers, coal bunkers, gas tanks, silos and factory facades, all printed in black-and-white and arranged in grids that emphasised their sameness - what she once called their "universality".