SFMOMA

Bernd & Hilla Becher at SFMOMA

Bernd & Hilla Becher at SFMOMA

The renowned German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher (1931–2007; 1934–2015) changed the course of late twentieth-century photography. Working as a rare artist couple, they focused on a single subject: the disappearing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America that fueled the modern era. Their seemingly objective style recalled nineteenth- and early twentieth-century precedents but also resonated with the serial…
Louis Stettner: Traveling Light

Louis Stettner: Traveling Light

Over the course of his eight-decade career, Louis Stettner created a singular approach to photographing everyday life. Born in Brooklyn in 1922, Stettner began working as a photographer in the 1930s and served in the U.S. Army in World War II before moving to Paris in 1947. There, he studied at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques, became friends with…
Susan Meiselas: Mediations

Susan Meiselas: Mediations

From war and human rights to cultural identity and domestic violence, Susan Meiselas’s (American, b. 1948) work covers a wide range of subjects and countries. This retrospective brings together projects from the beginning of her career in the 1970s to the present day, including her iconic portraits of carnival strippers, vivid color images of the conflicts in Central America in…
Diane Arbus: In the beginning

Diane Arbus: In the beginning

Diane Arbus: In the beginning considers the first seven years of the photographer’s career, from 1956 to 1962. A lifelong New Yorker, Arbus found the city and its citizens an endlessly rich subject for her art. Working in Times Square, the Lower East Side, and Coney Island, she made some of the most powerful portraits of the twentieth century, training…