Claudia Fahrenkemper
From 8 November to 12 January, Brussels Flamingo Contemporary Art and New Media presents works of Claudia Fährenkemper, a former student of Bernd Becher who turned to microphotography in the 1990’s.
The exhibition consists of some 50 photographs showing extraordinarily beautiful images of animalcule and other microstructures, taken from the ongoing series PLANKTOS and HABITUS. The outstanding quality of these photographs stems from both Claudia Fährenkemper’s vast technical experience in microphotography and the immaculate silver gelatine printing process. It lends the image a peerless 3-dimensionality.
Untiringly curious by nature, Claudia Fährenkemper follows the tradition of typological photography and comparative study. By representing the variation of form in a strictly documentary (one tends to call it drawing) style, she enables us to discover and to compare the manifold and refined organic forms that developed out of inevitable expedience.
Claudia Fährenkemper uses a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Instead of visible light, the SEM employs an electron beam and therefore breaks entirely new ground in visual perception and means of reproduction. It is this tremendous depth of focus of the SEM, in particular, that enables us to plunge into the micro-world and to perceive it with great wonder. Very surprised, we come across an obvious correspondence between the geometry and morphology represented in these pictures and the structural and ornamental forms with which the physical manifestations of modernity are built.
Born in Germany in 1959, Claudia Fährenkemper studied photography with Arno Jansen at Cologne’s University of Applied Sciences and at Düsseldorf’s Academy of Fine Art with Bernd Becher and Nan Hoover. She became an internationally acclaimed artist showing frequently in German and North American museums. As a recognised specialist, she regularly lectures on microphotography with specific emphasis on the crossroads where photography and science meet.
A catalogue has been published on the occasion of Claudia Fährenkemper’s exhibition at Brussels Flamingo.