PROVO, UTAH.- Over the last 30 years, German photographer Candida Höfer has created meticulously composed images depicting interiors of public and institutional spaces — spaces marked by the richness of human activity, yet largely devoid of human presence. Together, her images present a universe constructed by human intention, unearthing the patterns and logic imposed on these spaces by their now absent creators and inhabitants.

“Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence,” on view at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art from Sept. 15, 2006 through Jan. 6, 2007, is the first North American survey exhibition devoted to this celebrated artist. The exhibition consists of 50 chromogenic prints that embrace the full spectrum of her career, with an emphasis on her most recent work. The photographs of libraries, academic facilities, lecture and performance halls, painting and sculpture galleries, waiting rooms and cafés in this exhibition are captivating for their formal qualities of precise composition, saturated color and rhythmic pattern, as well as for her focused interest in buildings as containers for the diverse cultural traditions enacted within them.

Candida Höfer is the senior member of a group of students from the Düsseldorf Academy who studied under the renowned professor Bernd Becher in the 1970s and 1980s. The work that emanated from the academy, considered the most influential German art school of the time, and Becher’s classes, soon took the art-photography world by storm.

Since 1975 Höfer has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States, including solo exhibitions at the Hamburger Hunsthalle, Germany; the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; and the Centre Photographique d’Ille de France. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Kunsthaus Bregenz; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and Documenta 11, among others. In 2003, she represented Germany at the Venice Biennale together with the late Martin Kippenberger.

“Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence” will be on view in the Conway A. Ashton & Carl E. Jackman Gallery on the museum’s lower level. A companion exhibition to “Architecture of Absence” will be on view in the Paul & Betty Boshard Gallery also on the lower level. “Types and Typologies: German Photographers from the Norton Museum of Art,” an exhibition of photographs selected from the Norton Museum of Art’s permanent collection, provides a brief overview of the stylistic heritage to which Höfer’s work and that of other students of Bernd Becher at the Düsseldorf Art Academy is indebted. Both exhibitions will be on view from Sept. 15, 2006 through Jan. 6, 2007 and are free and open to the public.

“Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence” is co-organized by the University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. In addition to these two venues, the exhibition tour, which extends through 2007, includes the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; the Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; and the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee. The exhibition is funded, in part, by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. in Stuttgart, Germany. Additional funding for the presentation of this exhibition at BYU comes from Curtis and Mary Ann Atkisson and the Utah State Office of Museum Services.

An accompanying hardcover publication, titled “Candida Höfer: Architecture of Absence,” is the first major English language examination of Höfer’s work. The publication, which is published by the Aperture Foundation, features more than 50 color plates and three insightful, illustrated essays by Constance W. Glenn, emeritus director of exhibitions, and Mary-Kay Lombino, former curator of exhibitions, at the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach; and Virginia Heckert, associate curator of photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum. These essays place Höfer’s work in critical context and compare and contrast it to the work of her mentors, as well as her fellow students, and those artists whose work influenced or inspired them.