(Roughly) Daily

In 1966, German photographers Hilla and Bernd Becher set out in a Volkswagen for six months to photograph the monolithic architecture of coal mines in England and South Wales. In tow was their toddler, Max; their 8×10 camera; and a darkroom housed in a caravan. The couple had married five years earlier, beginning a four-decade-long partnership from which an entire school of photography would develop, hallmarked by its deadpan, studious view of the world and often rigorous sets of rules…

More of Hilla and Bernd Becher’s work, and a consideration of its impact, at “The Photographer Couple Who Turned Industrial Architecture into Fine Art.”

See also the Tate’s appreciation.

* Steven Wright

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As we try to find art in commerce, we might recall that it was on this date in 1908 that Harvard University established the Harvard Business School.  Originally created by the humanities faculty, it received independent status in 1910, and became a separate administrative unit in 1913.

This school of business and public administration was originally conceived as a school for diplomacy and government service on the model of the French Ecole des Sciences Politiques. The goal was an institution of higher learning that would offer a master of arts degree in the humanities field, with a major in business. In discussions about the curriculum, the suggestion was made to concentrate on specific business topics such as banking, railroads, and so on… the school would train qualified public administrators whom the government would have no choice but to employ, thereby building a better public administration…    [source: Esther Yogev, “Corporate Hand in Academic Glove: The New Management’s Struggle for Academic Recognition—The Case of the Harvard Group in the 1920s,” American Studies International (2001)]

But in the event, things took a different turn: just as Harvard’s medical school trained doctors and its law faculty trained lawyers, its new business school blazed a new trail by educating young people for a career in commerce.  Indeed, from the start, HBS enjoyed a close relationship with the corporate world.  Within a few years of its founding, many of its alumni became business leaders and began hiring graduates and other alumni for positions in their firms… a practice that has continued– and grown– to this day.

Baker Library at HBS

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