Industrial Facades

The German husband-and-wife authors are industrial photographers aesthetically concerned with integrated form and substance. They previously have produced individual volumes on water towers, blast furnaces, gas tanks and other subjects of clearly related function. The current collection is more recondite, with 264 impeccable and richly reproduced plates--squarely frontal, inanimate and pictorially unadorned--depicting small to middle-range industrial installations in Europe and America. Minimally linked to one another chiefly through camera style, the pictures are identified starkly in German: ``Ironworks, Brandenburg'' or ``Large Shop, Sachsen-Anhalt.'' There is little of architecture here, save for classically derivative arches, gables and pilasters adapted by craftsmen and engineers to ``the sheer necessities of industrial working processes,'' as Bussmann muses in his introduction. An item for specialists if ever there was one. (Apr.)