Sociocriticism Analysis of «Neutrality in Documentary» in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Photography Work

Abstract

The photographic work of Bernd and Hilla Becher is always considered as being strictly informative, applying a rigorous so-called scientific procedure in its very morphogenesis. Associated to the Dusseldorf School of Photography, this conceptual work is seen as a new attempt (leaving ideology aside) to be artistically emancipated from photography as the former rests on iconic signs characterized as neutral semiotic spaces. Now this neutrality becomes questionable in so far as it constitutes a mode of transcription of the iconic structures of the Bechers’ work in homology to the disenchantment (M. Weber) that is reactivated by the emergence of socio-historical structures of Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme (‘the New spirit of capitalism”), as it is describes in the eponymous book by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. In the same way, it is still doubtful whether their work, by transcribing the techno-scientific cultural unconscious unwittingly infiltrated in photography’s morphogenesis, is considered as belonging to some objectivistic neutrality, in so far as this unconscious reinforces an aesthetic indifference, through a process of aesthetic, cultural and symbolic desensitization. Thus, the concepts of disenchant- ment as well as of aesthetic indifference shake the notion of neutrality established by the prevailing contemporary art criticism. That is why this article examines the significant structures of emancipation or ‘liberation’ from any reference to real life, of semantic indifference and of a depersonalized vision of the world, as