Galerie Laffanour, in collaboration with Galerie Zander, is pleased to present a selection of works by German photographer Candida Höfer. Born in Eberswalde in 1944, Höfer is a leading figure of the Düsseldorf School of Photography and is today recognized as one of the major contemporary photographers internationally.
Influenced by the concept of visual memory and by an interest in how individuals shape their environment, Höfer’s projects explore the aesthetics of architectural space. Since the early 1980s, she has photographed libraries, museums, and opera houses with respect and meticulous composition. The absence of human figures in these cultural institutions, which serve purposes of conservation, display, mediation, and habitation, allows her to focus entirely on the structures themselves. The works presented here were taken between 2000 and 2016, depicting interiors from Los Angeles to Beijing via Düsseldorf. Their color palettes and perspectives capture an objective architectural style, with clean forms reflecting functional qualities and material requirements. Alongside large-format works, the exhibition also features a special selection of dye transfer prints. These images lean toward abstraction, capturing architectural details in close-up and, at times, entirely detaching from the objects themselves. Unlike typical interior views, they are not defined by titles. Light and color textures become the core of the compositions, enhanced by the remarkable intensity of the dye transfer printing process — a high-quality technique known since the 1960s–70s but now very rare.
In collaboration with the Zander Paris Gallery.
Galerie Downtown
Since its opening in 1980, Galerie Downtown, founded by François Laffanour, has explored and revived little-known aspects of 20th-century architectural furniture. The gallery owns and manages the archives of Galerie Steph Simon, which from 1956 to 1974 presented and published works by Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, Le Corbusier, Serge Mouille, Georges Jouve, and Isamu Noguchi.