Candida Höfer

Hong Kong’s buildings, nearly all built in the past hundred years, form a sharp contrast to Italy’s architecture, as seen in Candida Höfer’s series of eight photographs,“In Italy, Naples, and Florence,” 2007–2009. The Pedder Building—site of Höfer’s latest exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts—was built in 1924 and is classified by the city’s Antiquities and Monuments Office as a historic building. Though a charming structure from the colonial era, and an excellent space for galleries and shops, it was simply not built to inspire awe. Particularly remarkable in this setting, Höfer’s photographs—featuring the expansive interiors of opulent palaces, grand libraries, and majestic museums built centuries earlier—function like the panoramas of the nineteenth century: The large photographs present such a studied sense of space and perspective that they nearly create an in situ viewing experience of the Italian locations, producing the thrill of sightseeing without the hassle or expense of traveling to the sites.

In Biblioteca Uffizi Firenze II, 2008, Höfer captures a room in the Uffizi Library in Florence, a collection that includes some forty thousand volumes, many on art history, and some dating back to the seventeenth century. In the photograph, light pours through a set of windows, catching the glossy finish on the rows of desks. Every item in the room is carefully preserved and in perfect order. A striking luminosity unites the eight photographs in the series; even the interiors with no apparent natural light source appear bright, with every detail on the frescoes and exquisite furniture illuminated. These spaces, and the photographs themselves, represent an accumulation of knowledge, a history of human accomplishment.