Candida Höfer: Reading Rooms

About the Exhibition

Candida Höfer’s photographs presented a systematic visual study of rooms in various libraries, some modern and institutional; other centuries old and grand. People are noticeably absent from the highly formal images, which emphasized repeated forms within the rooms, such as chairs, tables, bookshelves, and light fixtures. The resulting patterns and sense of orderliness at first seem to be straightforward, detached, objective, and purely documentary. However, juxtapositions of incongruous elements and the mimetic nature of her subject matter hint at wit, irony and the surreal.