From November 10 until December 12, some of my work can be seen at Vazerol14 gallery in Chur, Switzerland. The exhibition includes some original 40x50cm tintypes and 4×5″ albumen prints from INSECTAE, a macro project I worked on from 2017-2019. Additionally, I am quite happy to introduce the current project holocene, a long term landscape project.
The gallery is open every Saturday from 11-15h or upon appointment – please contact the gallery directly via electronic mail.
INSECTAE
The world of insects is distant and at the same time interwoven with ours. The more closely we make our observations, the more this world full of beauty, terror and uniqueness unfolds. Contact with this universe often leads to fatal misunderstandings and the beauty can usually only be seen up close. Inspired by entomological drawings, the large-scale works reveal the geometry and perfection of those creatures that live among us, but are certainly not always welcome. The use of the wet plate process for this series creates technical obstacles. A main tool for this series is a wooden studio camera that is over 120 years old and bulky. Allowing a bellows extension of almost two meters and finally contact with the insects. The pure silver on the unique 40x50cm tintype photographs, the shallow depth of field, a magnification ratio of 4:1 immortalize the fragile beauty of the insects.
Holocene
The search for points between the ages is futile – time has always been a slippery slope – and yet we do it. Everything we associate with the past is always driven by the desire to return. We look for moments that divide time into a before and an after, points like doorways – as if they will allow us to leave the present where we entered it. In many ways, 1850 is such a point. It marks the beginning of industrialization, the beginning of many things that in retrospect we would like to undo or change.
The 1850s also mark the beginning of photography: In Holocene, I use the collodion wet plate negative process to capture nature as it unfolds before me today, printing it on salt and albumen paper, much like the first photographers at the gateway to the present. It is not an attempt to escape through this door, but shows that this door, that we imagine, may not have existed.
