Pennsylvania Coal Mine Tipples

by Bernd and Willa Becher

This is the oddest and loveliest of the Becher’s volumes of architectural typologies.

You can have your blast furnaces, I love the coal mine tipples. I love the way you can see the structure, the bracing, usually made of nailed together boards, all creaky and improvised. The shabby landscapes, shot plain as day in the soft light of winter when there are no leaves on the trees, nothing to obscure the grandeur of wooden towers for coal shafts.

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