After studying at the Kölner Werkschulen, Candida Höfer began working for newspapers as a portrait photographer and later studied daguerreotypes while working at the Werner Bokelberg studio in Hamburg. She enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf to study film in 1973, but transitioned to photography, becoming Bernd Becher’s student. Along with Thomas Ruff, she was one of the first of Becher’s students to use color, showing her work as slide projections.

Since 1980, in her ongoing Räume (Spaces) series, Höfer has concentrated on public spaces inside libraries, hotels, museums, concert halls, palaces, and other buildings. In 2001, for Douze-Twelve, commissioned by the Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle in Calais, Höfer photographed all twelve casts of Auguste Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais in their installations in various museums and sculpture gardens.