Biography of Axel Hütte
Living and working in in Düsseldorf and Berlin, Axel Hütte (born 1951 in Essen, DE) is one of a group of German artists—including Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff—who studied under the artist duo Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Hütte has emerged as a leading member of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, known for reworking the documentary photographic tradition of his mentors. Where the Becher's focused in on crafted mechanisms and monuments of humanity, Hütte turned to nature in the search for a comparable sense of the sublime.
While Axel Hütte is best known for nocturnal landscape photography created using long exposures, Hütte's oeuvre explores geometry in landscapes, forest, waterscapes, and bridges. Each one of his works is engrossing and narrows in on a single motif at a time, which in turn takes up the entire lens. By positioning his subject as the sole often-repetitive silhouette suggests its continuation beyond the contours of the frame extending beyond and into infinity. Teetering between awe inspiring eerie, Hütte's lack of temporal context and human presence are typical of his predilection for experimenting with perception.
