Gas Tanks.

Specificity is what Bernd & Hilla Becher's work has always really been about, which explains why the narrow focus of this book becomes the key to the wealth of visual pleasure it provokes. The tanks featured here could constitute a single section in a larger look at the Becher oeuvre, with a handful of examples representing the whole series. But their project has now evolved to the point where a single subcategory of their work can sustain an elaborate treatment like this one.

After opening with the briefest of descriptions of the physical differences among the four basic types of gas tanks, the book launches right into the meat of the matter, which are the 102 duotone photographs, taken in five different countries over the course of the last 30 years. Wisely, the Bechers save the chapter on spherical gasholders for last, as these compelling snowball shapes are invariably the greatest crowd-pleasers, and bear out most obviously the sense of variations on a single prototype on which all of the work depends.

The joy of looking at these anonymous examples of 20th-century industrial architecture isn't too much different from that of browsing through a book about the architecture of Pompeii or Cairo--a truth that this collaborative couple seems to have gleaned long before the rest of us.