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Photographs by Candida Hafer. Text by Pascal Beausse, Annette Haudiquet.

Architecture of Absence examines Hofer's unique oeuvre and the relationship of her architecture work to that of the "Becher Circle"-noted students of the Dusseldorf Academy's renowned professor Bernd Becher, including Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, and Axel Hutte.

For Candida Höfer 'projects' are works in multiple parts that have a planned, additional course or which are completed once they reach a definitive state. Projects: Done refers to fourteen completed projects from between 1968 and 2008. The fifteenth project is the presentation itself, which the artist has developed in collaboration with the architects Kuehn Malvezzi. Candida Höfer presents her work in unfamiliar formats: catalogue raisonné, small format views of the series Zoologische Gärten (1993), Die Bürger von Calais (2000) or On Kawara (2006/07), or large format images such as Türken in Deutschland (1979) and the slide project 80 Pictures, which is presented on a black background. Flipper is a collage of black and white photographs of pinball machines, spread across eight pages. Liverpool, an early work from 1968, presents low-key, whole page black and white pictures. A further focus is Höfer's pictures of exhibition spaces created by the architects Kuehn Malvezzi. English and German text.

Candida Hofer's relationship to architecture is fully in keeping with the New Objectivity tradition. Her photographs of public spaces are almost sober and ascetic in feel - the specific atmosphere is disturbed by neither visitors nor users, especially as she forgoes any spectacular staging of the locations. The emptiness is imbued with substance by a subtle attention to color, and the prevailing silence thus instilled with a metaphysical quality that gives voice to the objects - over and above the eloquence of the furnishings or the pathos of the architecture.

Seit einigen Jahren hat die Künstlerin ihren fotografischen Blick ins Innere von Völkerkundemuseen gerichtet, in denen unterschiedliche Kulturen in eine natürliche Spannung treten und aufschlussreiche Überlagerungen bilden. Auch Depot und Archive, Restaurations- und Bearbeitungsräume werden gezeigt und gewähren dem Betrachter Einblick in das breite Spektrum dieser Orte des Staunens und Entdeckens. In den Textbeiträgen setzten sich die Autoren mit dem Werden, den Konzeptualisierungen und dem Wandel ethnographischer Museen auseinander, wie sie sich auch in den Fotografien von Candida Höfer spiegeln. Völkerkundemuseum der Universität Zürich, 27.05.2004 - 15.08.2004