The Spiritual Interiors of Candida Höfer

Born in 1944, this German photographer is known for depicting interiors around the world. In 2015, she took her camera to Mexico. By employing limitless depth of field within her massive chromogenic prints, Höfer expertly captures our attention as the eye dances throughout each baroque space.

While some of her locations have religious significance, Höfer imbues all her spaces, including theaters and museums, with the same spiritual quality we find in her convents and churches. Through her use of available light, Höfer invites us to take deep, meditative breaths with hushed reverence for both her majestic scale and richly ornamented subject matter.

Though perhaps Höfer intends the works to be psychologically engaging, by not including people, she provides these opulent spaces as the viewers own environment. "It is not my intention to make the audience reassess anything,” she states. “I just want to give them an opportunity to reflect on the image and their own experience of space—maybe even the experience of the space in which they view the image that stands before them.”

Höfer particularly succeeds in this when pairing two points of view from a theater. In both Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato I and Teatro Degollado Guadalajara I, the photographer shows the view from a stage, looking out onto empty rows of seats, while in Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato III and Teatro Degollado Guadalajara III, we look down from the balcony at a stage filled only with invisible ghosts.

Höfer’s heavily textured works are occasionally interrupted by such elegant compositions as Palacio de Bellas Artes, Ciudad de México II (Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City II). This essentially abstract composition charges the space with an etheric glow like a modern mandala.

Alongside her other photographs, Höfer’s smaller works punctuate like asymmetrical jewels. Here she offers a genuine look at an unassuming corner, nook, or checkered floor, zeroing in on calm details, as in Vela 2015 (Candle 2015).

In all aspects, Höfer’s work elevates the spirit.

Candida Höfer in Mexico is on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh NC, through January 20, 2019.