Candida Höfer: Opera de Paris

Candida Höfer's works have something timeless about them, and opera is perhaps the most timeless cultural delight. Having dedicated a photographic series to the cathedrals of knowledge that are libraries, Höfer in her most recent cycle captures opera houses, the palaces of performing arts. Höfer's earlier pictures of public spaces--libraries, lecture halls, museums, meeting rooms--forever devoid of people, made us sense the presence of those absent. Her opera photographs take us one step beyond: empty foyers, orchestras, stages, wings, and boxes make us imagine both theprotagonists--performers and audience--and the fictitious figures, plots, and places that populate these venues during a night at the opera. In her most recent publication Candida Höfer portrays two Paris opera houses that are exemplary for their age and time: the neoclassicist Palais Garnier (1875), original Phantom of the Opera site, and the modern-style Opéra Bastille (1989).