Claudia Fährenkemper

   
 

TEXTS

> Claudia Fährenkemper: Fathoming Dimension
> The Origin of Form and Form as Origin
> Mikrokosmos
> Armor
> Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights)
> Pflanzenfotogramme
> Planktos
> Imago
> Metamorphosis
> Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


Claudia Fährenkemper 1 - Vom Großen ins Kleine

By FotoTV.de, movie Marc Ludwig, camera Marc Ludwig,
editor Merlin Wennmann, Björn Germek
Claudia Fährenkemper on Youtube

Claudia Fährenkemper 2 - Rüstungen und Pflanzenfotogramme

By FotoTV.de, movie Marc Ludwig, camera Marc Ludwig,
editor Merlin Wennmann, Björn Germek
Claudia Fährenkemper on Youtube


 

Claudia Fährenkemper: Fathoming Dimension

Introduction
The pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras is credited with saying “man is the measure of all things”; that as human beings we tend to measure value, importance, even truth, against our own perceptions. That relativism remains controversial, but in the case of sheer physical scale, it is a concept with a certain validity. We experience the world relative to our own scale, things that are bigger than us tend to impress more than things that are smaller, especially when they are very small. We think little of swatting a fly but would treat an elephant or a jumbo jet with more respect. Of course we have, in the past couple of years, learned a new respect for a tiny virus and, more slowly, to understand how much we depend for our survival on the humble bee. Scale is no real measure of ultimate significance.For three decades, extremes of scale have been a focus for the German artist Claudia Fährenkemper. From the gargantuan excavators gobbling up and reshaping the industrial landscape of the Rhineland to getting up close and personal with bugs and beetles. With the aid of an electron microscope, her images of insects reveal the complex structure of creatures we find it all too easy to terminate with the squirt of an aerosol. These images give us pause. They rescale the insects, presenting them as human-sized portraits so that we might meet them on more equal terms.
Something the machines and the beetles have in common is their hard exterior: the steel plate of the mining machinery and the tough exoskeleton of the insects. Humans, on the other hand, have an internal skeleton and an all too vulnerable, fleshy exterior, and so we fashioned armour to form a carapace. Armour that not only protects the fragile body of each wearer but advertises their supposed invincibility. In its design, with one Antipodean exception, the armour shown here goes far beyond simple functionality. It is chased with rich embellishment, imbued with character and even laced a touch of grotesque humour. The metal suit becomes an emblem of the wearer’s own indomitable status.
It is the intersection of scale and shell that connects and animates the three bodies of work we will explore in this interview. For me, it is a theme that reveals a degree of prescience when considered in the light of current events: pandemic, climate change, and the ever-expanding military-industrial complex. Physically, human beings are highly vulnerable. We prospered as a species not because of our great size or tough exterior, but because we learned to live and work together, to cooperate and be stronger in that unity. Today, we are coming to understand that we need not only to work together within our communities, but as a species and within an ecology, lest hubris drive us the way of the dinosaurs while the bugs and beetles inherit the earth.

Interview by Alasdair Foster

Interview

Your work has spanned many scales of subject. What led you to photograph the behemoths of the Rhineland’s opencast mining?
As part of my university geography studies, I visited the open-cast lignite mines in the Rhineland. The sheer scale of the machines used there was overwhelming. Over the next five years [1988–1993], a period spanning German reunification, I photographed these machines as they progressed on their migration through the landscape, reshaping it as they went. In doing so, I always felt an ambivalence. Their technical construction was impressive, but I found their scale, and the landforms they created, uncanny.

Your focus then shifted to the very small.
I saw various magazine articles with images of human-made microstructures as small as a grain of dust, which had been created to use in micro-machines to be placed inside the body. They made me curious because their forms and shapes reminded me of details of the huge excavators I had been photographing – for example, a bucket wheel.
I contacted the Institute for Microstructure Technology at the Nuclear Research Center in Karlsruhe and, in 1993, I was able to use their scanning electron microscope for the first time. The resulting photograph of a microturbine combined with a prepared beetle was a key experience for me. Compared to the complexity and perfection of the beetle, the microturbine seemed almost primitive. I turned my attention to the minutiae of the natural world.

What was it about this equipment that you found interesting?
The scanning electron microscope (SEM) has been used for scientific research since the mid-1960s. Instead of visible light the SEM uses a beam of electrons, which generates images of tremendous detail and depth of focus. It was exactly this illusion of space, plasticity, and materiality that attracted me; it made the images seem almost tangible. And it reveals a fascinating microcosm that is normally only accessible to scientists.
I learned how to use the SEM by photographing insects at the Zoological Research Center and Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn. Initially they were prepared for me, but later I learned how to do this myself. This involves first selecting an interesting insect using a binocular microscope, removing dust, legs and sometimes feelers to avoid them becoming charged in the electron beam and to free the shape of the insect head from distracting details. The specimen is then dried in alcohol, fixed onto a small platform, and covered in gold before it can be exposed to the high vacuum in the SEM. The surface is then scanned by an electron beam, with the image built up line by line. Over the next eleven years I explored not only beetles, but also plant seeds, amphibian larvae, crystals and plankton.

In your series ‘Metamorphosis’ you use an electron microscope to photograph tadpoles and other embryonic creatures. There is an uncannily human aspect to the features you recorded.
A scientist at the Bonn Institute who was doing research on frogs provided me with the tadpoles. She was looking for a new species of frog that could be identified by a skin pattern, which required her to use SEM at high magnification. I, on the other hand, was using a much lower magnification so that I could see whole limbs and organs. What surprised me was how closely the overall morphology of the tadpole echoed that of the human. I had had no idea of this… the first time I looked into the eye of a tadpole was a profoundly touching moment for me.
My photomicrographs are neither for scientific illustration nor simply arbitrary interpretations of microstructures. Rather, they seek to provide insight into the interrelationships in nature, conveying an idea of the diversity, beauty and uncanniness of life forms in which the human dimension is explicitly included.

As an artist, what kind of technique did you employ when using this scientific equipment?
My approach was quite different from that of the scientists, who usually prefer a low contrast result. I, on the contrary, was always concerned to achieve the highest degree of contrast while maintaining a broad tonal range. My subjects shine like precious sculptural objects against a deep black background. The result blends documentary, surreal, and techno-futuristic characteristics.
While the image of each subject was created digitally in the SEM, it was then recorded on film using an analogue camera attached to the microscope. This gives the final print an essentially photographic feel.

In the series ‘Imago’ you concentrate on beetles and other insects. What was it you wanted to capture in these… ‘portraits’?
You are right, these are portraits. There are surprising similarities between the microcosm and the world around us. It is a long-term series to which I have added again and again, whenever I found an interesting insect in my garden or on my travels. My goal was to combine the sensual experience and the magical illusion of a tiny creature appearing as both a sculpture and a portrait.
For example, the image of the firefly head [‘13-06-2’], created in 2006. I had been watching with fascination the swarming of fireflies on a warm June night, searching for mates with their luminescent organs. I captured a specimen to examine more closely in the SEM. It was only then that I could see the eyes, which are under the dark, hairless areas on the head. These membranes act like sunglasses, protecting the eye from being blinded by daylight. This is very unusual, because in most other insects the eyes are much more exposed. Somehow this picture reminds me of a firefighter, well-armed with protective clothing, both brave and prudent.

How did you achieve this anthropomorphic effect?
I always photographed the insects from a perspective of above and behind, framing the head and a part of the neck like a human portrait. I avoided a frontal perspective because that would have created a rather horrible impression. My intention was just the opposite, to take a respectful point of view, presenting insect heads, formally, as portraits of individuals, each with their own character, like an ancestral gallery of the microcosmic. Comparing these portraits reveals the diversity, the individuality, and the uncanny beauty, of these tiny life forms. By enlarging these images and presenting them in a gallery, I hope to offer new ways to perceive and respond to nature.
Today, twenty years later, with ever-decreasing insect populations worldwide – which is having dramatic consequences for biodiversity and the quality of our lives – this ‘Imago’ series stands as a plea to respect these tiny creatures. We still know so little about them and the strategies by which they have successfully survived for so long on earth.

This idea of the portrait carries into your series, ‘Armor’ [named in the US spelling]. How did this series begin?
The series presents parade and tournament armour that was specially made for emperors, kings and great generals from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. This armour protected those historical figures just as its hard shell protects a beetle. And, as with the beetles, the distinctive shape, features, and markings of the armour fascinated me. They speak of faith, love, and hope; about power and wealth, but also about vulnerability.
It led me to wonder what artifacts will outlive us as evidence of our cultural, spiritual, and emotional legacy in times to come? When I began this series in 2010, the growing threat of violence and terror around the world also became an inspiration.

There is a fascinating similarity between the insects interpreted through a radical shift in scale and the armour seen across the distance of time.
Yes, it is that fathoming of dimension that always appeals to me. From the gigantic mining machines to the microcosm of the beetle portraits… and now I have arrived at the human scale, in which the fathoming of time and culture come into play.
These centuries-old, fragile, handcrafted, and artistically elaborate ‘shells’ fascinate me. They bear witness to fine craftsmanship and great expense, and to the way styles and fashions changed over the centuries. But they also encourage us to imagine what the original wearer was like.
The grimacing expression of ‘Armor N 05-13-3’ immediately captivated me. It dates back to about 1525. The character lines at the eyelid and the whiskers etched into the surface were probably a fashionable trend of the Renaissance. For me, the helmet has something playful about it, with its round bulbous nose, and the strangely demonic imagery hidden in its patterns. They reflect not just the religion and culture of their time, but the creative imagination of their maker … and somehow also the wearer’s sense of humour as they paraded in their armour at the carnival. Our material culture outlives our human span, and it is fascinating to imagine just what the long-deceased wearer was like.

How did you go about photographing it? I assume there are many conservation constraints with items this old.
This suit of armour is in the collection of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. It was carefully lifted out of its display case by two members of the museum staff so that I could photograph it with the large format camera. The final image has been heavily manipulated to darkened down the museum background and the contrast increased to give the visor’s funny, cocky expression a hint of something sinister.

Where did you find these suits of armour?
It began on a trip to Vienna. While exploring the Kunsthistorisches Museum, I suddenly found myself in the Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer [the court hunting and armoury chamber], where all the precious armour is beautifully presented, many openly without display cases. I contacted the director of the museum, showed him my book of beetle portraits, and asked him if it would be possible to portray the Viennese armour in the collection in a similar way. Happily, he was open to this idea, and I subsequently travelled to Vienna several times to photograph the armour.
I researched other collections around the world, and in Australia I came across the amazing armour of Ned Kelly held in the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. Its outlaw history and crude construction immediately intrigued me, and I was eager to include it in my armour series.

What is the strangest piece of armour you have photographed?
‘Armor W-06-14-3’ is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. It dates from about 1590. What surprised me is the way that the steel helmet has been covered with white silk. With its deep peak and cloth surface, it reminded me of one of those baseball caps people wear today. Perhaps it was also a fashionable look five centuries ago. At the same time, the visor with its large eyes and wide grin reminds me of a smiley-face emoticon. Somehow it all looks very modern and not at all daunting… even exhilarating. It was precisely that ambivalence of function and charisma that appealed to me.

Your work is often likened to various German photographers for different reasons: to Bernd and Hilla Becher [1931–2007; 1934–2015] for its rigorous cataloguing of types; to Karl Blossfeldt [1865–1932] for its emphasis on structure. Were they a strong influence for you?
Yes, Bernd and Hilla Becher were my teachers, and I was certainly influenced by them. Their documentary approach, strictly formal, analytical perspective, and systematic, typological order have radically paved new roads for the medium of photography and strengthened its position in the art context. The Becher’s credo was to question the object. The object had to reveal itself. This approach gives viewers the opportunity to explore the image themselves.
But, before I entered the Becher class at the Dusseldorf Art Academy in 1989, I had studied art photography for two years in the class of Arno Jansen, himself a student of Otto Steinert. [In 1951, Steinert founded the subjective photography movement, which championed photography that explored the inner psyche and human condition rather than reflecting the outside world.] However, I felt that this self-consciously artistic, and in some ways surreal, approach was not what I wanted for my photography at the time. Nonetheless, I think traces of it returned in my photomicrographs. Finally Nan Hoover [1931–2008] my last teacher at the Dusseldorf art academy, a video, light and performance artist encouraged me in my interest in using scientific imaging techniques.
And, of course, Karl Blossfeldt’s work has also influenced me. I saw his plant photographs in a large exhibition of two hundred vintage prints at the Kunstmuseum Bonn in 1994 and was deeply impressed by their power, monumentality and sculptural quality. Their systematic, almost scientific, approach to image-making certainly had an impact on my photomicrographs, which I began that same year.

That said, there is also a sense of Freud’s unheimlich [the uncanny] beloved of the Surrealists…
During my early studies I was fascinated by the enigmatic and unsettling imagery of painters like Giorgio de Chirico [1888–1978] and René Magritte [1898–1967] in which simple, quiet forms appear monumental through the use of perspective and lighting. They are mysterious pictures without spatial determination, unlocalisable in any reality. At the same time, the objects are rendered in sharp verisimilitude, almost tangibly so, which increases their magical presence… And of course the collages and frottages of Max Ernst [1891–1976] with their enigmatic magic from the microcosm to the universe, their mixing and contrasting of the rational and logical with a world of imagination and fantasy. These all made a lasting impression on me.
So, yes, the ambivalent beauty and uncanniness of forms and structures, and the combination of the real and the surreal, definitely play a role in my work. It is possible that some of my microphotographs, or even some of the ‘Armor’ images, touch layers of the subconscious in the viewer.

Biographical Notes
Claudia Fährenkemper was born in Castrop-Rauxel, West Germany, in 1959. She studied art and geography for the teaching profession at the University of Düsseldorf (1979–86), and photography first at University of Applied Sciences Cologne (1987–89), and then at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art (1989–95). Her work has featured in more than thirty solo exhibition and over fifty group shows in Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania.
Her photographs are held in many prestigious public and private collections including GoEun Museum of Photography (Busan, Korea), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany), Musée de L’Elysée (Lausanne, Switzerland), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), and Santa Barbara Museum of Art (California, USA). Claudia Fährenkemper received the Sparkasse Pforzheim prize for Architecture and Society (1989), and an Excellence Award (Art and Contemporary Photography) at the Pingyao International Photography Festival, China (2016). She lives in Steinheim, Germany.

Talking Pictures - Interviews with Photographers Around the World
Alasdair Foster, 19 February 2022

Online version of the intreview



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Der Ursprung der Form und die Form als Ursprung
Fotografie - Malerei - Skulptur

(English text below)
Textauszug aus dem Katalog zur Ausstellung im Kunstraum Villa Friede, Bonn, 2021
Als Fotokünstlerin verfolgt Claudia Fährenkemper eine Serie oft über Jahre und nähert sich in Typologien einem Thema so lange, bis es auserzählt ist, zum Beispiel unter dem Rasterelektronenmikroskop fotografierte Insekten. Was sie hier interessiert, sind die „filigranen und beweglichen organischen Konstruktionen und [ihr] Reichtum an morphologischen Details.“2 So offenbart die Oberfläche der Insekten in der Imago-Serie aus der Nähe betrachtet – also so, wie man sie in der Realität niemals zu Gesicht bekommt – lebendige Strukturen, wahre Landschaften aus Mulden, Blasen, Haaren oder Borsten. Dabei entsteht ein ganz individuelles Portrait eines jeden Tieres, das es mit dieser Art Muster kein zweites Mal zu geben scheint, so wie auch jeder menschliche Fingerabdruck ein Unikat ist. In der seriellen Betrachtung verlieren die Schwarz-Weiß-Fotografien jedoch den Realitätsbezug und erinnern an abstrakte Gemälde – nur weiße Linien auf schwarzem Grund.
Dieses allzu kunstvoll (von der Natur) gestaltete Gewand, der Panzer der Insekten, ihre Rasteraugen und Fühler werden auf erstaunliche Weise in den Rüstkleidern der Armor- und der Samurai-Serie widergespiegelt. In ihnen kehrt Claudia Fährenkemper zur Lebensgröße zurück und lässt uns den Kriegern Auge in Auge gegenübertreten.
Wie schon die Insekten erstaunen die Rüstungen der Armor-Serie mit einer ausgefeilten Originalität. Jede Fotografie lässt uns erneut die individuellen Details erforschen, Gravuren und Verzierungen entdecken, macht die unterschiedlichen Formgebungen der Panzerungen sichtbar. Im Licht-und-Schatten-Spiel der Schwarz-Weiß-Fotografie eröffnen die konvexen und konkaven Strukturen einen vielfältigen Bildraum und verleihen den Rüstungen Lebendigkeit und Schönheit.
Die einzelnen Helme sind in ähnlicher Weise exklusiv wie die „Antlitze“ der Insekten. Hier eine knubbelige Kartoffelnase, dort eine spitze Schnute, Augenschlitze mal schmal, mal gerundet, mal mit angedeuteten Augenbrauen versehen, aber stets so dunkel und uneinsehbar, dass man sich fragt, ob noch jemand in dieser Rüstung stecken mag und uns beobachtet.
Die Samurais weisen ihrerseits Merkmale auf, die stark an Insekten erinnern, z.B. Kopfschmuck wie Fühler, Haare oder Gewänder, die wie sich bald entfaltende Flügel oder Panzer anmuten. Bei dieser Serie handelt es sich um Farbfotografien. Die japanischen Rüstungen sind dunkel gehalten und weisen punktuell rote, goldgelbe, blaue und seltener grüne Partien auf. Auch wenn sich die Symbolik der Farben in der Bildbetrachtung nicht erschließt, erinnern sie an die Signalfarben, die wir in der Natur wiederfinden und die den Samurais eine starke Ähnlichkeit zu Tieren oder Fabelwesen verleihen.
Rüstungen, zu schön, um damit in den Krieg zu ziehen und aufgrund ihrer (glänzenden) Unversehrtheit sicherlich auch nicht zu diesem Zweck angefertigt – sie dienen der Repräsentation, sollen Größe, Stärke und Macht nur demonstrieren, niemals ihr ausgesetzt sein.
2 Claudia Fährenkemper, in: Klaus Hausmann: „Claudia Fährenkemper – Eine Fotokünstlerin zwischen Extremdimensionen“, in: Mikrokosmos. Zeitschrift für Mikroskopie (96, No 1, 2007).

Anna Döbbelin und Jan Philipp Nühlen
Kunstmuseum Bonn

> Armor Series images   > Samurai Series images



The Origin of Form and Form as Origin
Photography - Painting - Sculpture

(English text below)
Text excerpt from catalogue of exhibition at Kunstraum Villa Friede, Bonn, 2021
As a photographic artist Claudia Fährenkemper often pursues a series over a number of years, approaching a theme systematically for as long as it takes until it is fully explored, as is the case in her pictures of insects photographed under a scanning electron microscope. What interests her here are the “filigree and moveable constructions and [their] wealth of morphological details.”2 For instance, when viewed from close up – i.e. in a way that never happens in the real world – the surface of the insects of the Imago series discloses lively structures, veritable landscapes of hollows, bubbles, hairs or bristles. An individual portrait of each animal emerges, exhibiting a type of pattern that appears to be entirely one of a kind, in the same way as every human fingerprint is unique. However, when viewed serially, the black-and-white photographs lose their correspondence to reality, being reminiscent of abstract paintings – consisting only of white lines on a black ground. This all too artfully designed attire (nature’s work), the insect's carapace, their compound eyes and antennae are reflected in astonishing ways in the protective garments of the Armor and Samurai series. Here Claudia Fährenkemper reverts back to natural size and allows us to come face to face with the warriors.
Like the insects, the suits of armour of the Armor series are of an astonishingly refined originality. Each photograph invites us to examine the individual details closely, to discover engravings and ornaments, and each brings the different shapes used on the plaiting to the fore. In the play of light and shadow of the black-and-white photographs the convex and concave structures open up a diverse pictorial space, endowing the armours with liveliness and beauty.
The individual helmets are matchless in a similar way as the “countenance” of the insects. A knobbly potato nose here, a pointed snout there, some eye slits narrow, others rounded, an occasional hint of an eye brow – however, the armours are invariably so dark and impenetrable to the eye that one wonders whether someone might still be inside, watching us.
The Samurais, in turn, are endowed with features that are strongly reminiscent of insects, such as antenna-like headdresses, or hair and garments evoking a sense of insect carapaces or wings about to unfold. For this series, the artist used colour photography. The Japanese suits of armour are dark coloured and in places exhibit red, golden yellow, blue and, more rarely, green areas. Although the symbolic value of the colours used is not evident to the viewer, they are reminiscent of the bright colours that occur in nature, and they endow the Samurais with a strong likeness to animals or mythical creatures.
The armours are too beautiful to be used in war, and, considering their (shiny) perfection, it is certain that they were not made for this purpose – they had a symbolic function, serving to merely demonstrate strength and power rather than ever being subjected to it.
2 Claudia Fährenkemper, in: Klaus Hausmann: “Claudia Fährenkemper – Eine Fotokünstlerin zwischen Extremdimensionen” (Claudia Fährenkemper – a photographic artist between extreme dimensions), in: Mikrokosmos. Zeitschrift für Mikroskopie (96, No. 1, 2007).

Anna Döbbelin and Jan Philipp Nühlen
Kunstmuseum Bonn

> Armor Series images   > Samurai Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Die Interpretation des Mikrokosmos durch die Fotografie

(English text below)
... Das Land jedoch, in dem sich die Mikrofotografie als vielfältiges künstlerisches Ausdrucksmittel im 20. Jahrhundert der größten Popularität erfreute, war Deutschland. Und dafür gab es verschiedene Gründe. Vor allem beschleunigte sich in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 20. Jahrhunderts die Entwicklung von Linsen und Vorsatzlinsen für Kameras und Mikroskope, und durch Veröffentlichungen und Lichtbildprojektionen fanden technische Informationen über die Mikrofotografie und ihre Bildsprache weite Verbreitung. Das führte zu einer Popularisierung der Mikrofotografie und zu einer gesteigerten Wertschätzung visueller wissenschaftlicher Darstellungen. Die bedeutendsten Fortschritte in der optischen Technologie waren in Deutschland erzielt worden, und gegen Ende des Jahres 1937 waren, wie auch in fotografischen Fachzeitschriften dieser Zeit bestätigt wurde, nicht mehr nur professionelle, in Laboratorien tätige Wissenschaftler die Abnehmer für mikrofotografische Materialien, sondern auch Fotografen und Künstler.
... Um die Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts hatte eine Revolution in der Mikrofotografie stattgefunden. 1935 kam das erste Elektronenmikroskop auf den Markt, und in den folgenden fünf Jahren wurde es in schneller Folge immer weiterentwickelt, bis seine Vergrößerungskapazität die des besten Lichtmikroskops um das 50fache übertraf. Heute stehen uns neue Technologien wie etwa das Rasterelektronenmikroskop zur Verfügung, das nicht nur ein extrem hohes Auflösungsvermögen aufzuweisen hat, sondern darüber hinaus alle Ritzen und Winkel der Mikrowelt in einer erstaunlichen Dreidimensionalität wiederzugeben vermag.
Dieser Fortschritt hat Claudia Fährenkempers makellose, stark vergrößerte Mikrofotografien von Insekten technisch ermöglicht; was sie in ihrer Präzision und vollendeten formalen und technischen Realisierung jedoch visuell so bezwingend macht, ist die außergewöhnliche Vision der Fotografin. Von den typischen mikrofotografischen Illustrationen in entomologischen Fachbüchern unterscheiden sich ihre Bilder durch ihr Wissen um die architektonischen Möglichkeiten der Exemplare, die sie fotografiert. Darüber hinaus weiß sie deren Details in etwas zu transformieren, das von ihrer biologischen Funktion isoliert zu existieren scheint. Während sie in all diesen Fotografien – deren Vergrößerungsfaktoren von dreißig bis dreitausend reichen – gleichzeitig und mehrdeutig mit den Begriffen des Schönen wie des Grotesken spielt, stellt Fährenkemper sicher, dass jede einzelne den Betrachter durch einen anderen Aspekt der Mikrostruktur in ihren Bann zieht. In Sinneshaar eines Käfers stellt sie zum Beispiel die zarten Formen in den Vordergrund, die das Sinnesorgan des Käfers repräsentieren. Die mikrofotografisch aufgezeichneten Formen verleihen dem Sujet oft eine Sinnlichkeit, die an die Gemälde von Georgia O’Keeffe erinnert. Flügel und Flügeldecken eines Käfers zeigt diese Körperteile des Insekts und fasziniert uns aufgrund der außerordentlich komplexen, verwickelten und vielfältigen Architektur aus horizontalen Schichten und miteinander verbundenen Formen, die sich übereinander und ineinander falten. Der »gepanzerte« Körper des Käfers in Käfer gleicht der Rüstung eines Kriegers und wirkt gleichsam skulptural; Fährenkempers Bild zieht die Aufmerksamkeit des Betrachters auf die Komplexität und Zweckdienlichkeit der Formgebung in der Natur.
Die für Blossfeldts Werk charakteristische neutrale Präsentation, die Klarheit des Ausdrucks und die betonte Offenlegung der Struktur treten auch in Fährenkempers Fotografien zutage. An einem Konzept archetypischer Naturformen, das aus der Theorie einer einheitlichen Ästhetik in der Kunst abgeleitet ist, ist sie jedoch weniger interessiert. Ihre Vision scheint – in der Schöpfung einer Parallelwelt aus nie geahnten Formen und Gestalten – Max Ernst und seiner surrealistischen Sicht auf den Mikrokosmos näher zu stehen.
Als Schülerin von Bernd Becher an der Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie hat Fährenkemper mit ihren Interpretationen mikroskopischer Ansichten von Insekten eine Monumentalität der Form erreicht, die einigen der phänomenalen Fördertürmefotografien ihres Lehrers und seiner Partnerin Hilla Becher in nichts nachsteht. Wie ihre Vorläufer, Blossfeldt und Renger-Patzsch, bedient sich Fährenkemper der Instrumente und analytischen Werte der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, um Kunst zu machen. Letztendlich ist es nicht die wissenschaftliche Aussagekraft, die für sie Bedeutung hat, sondern die Kapazität des Bildes, diese neue Beziehung zur Welt des Mikrokosmos zu wiederzugeben, dem Betrachter einen sinnlichen Eindruck von den vollkommenen und komplexen winzigen Formen zu vermitteln, aus denen sich die Bewohner dieser Welt zusammensetzen.

Text (Auszug) von Ann Thomas, Ottawa (National Gallery of Canada)
[Claudia Fährenkemper – Photomicrographs; HG.: Christiane Stahl, Alfred-Erhardt-Stiftung, Köln, Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1456-1]

> IMAGO Series images 

Interpreting the Microcosm through Photographs

(German text above)
… However, Germany was the country where the pervasive use of photomicrography for a range of artistic expression enjoyed the greatest popularity in the twentieth century. There were several reasons for this.
First of all, progress in the development of lenses and attachments for both cameras and microscopes accelerated in the early decades of the twentieth century, while technical information about photomicrography and its imagery was widely disseminated through publications and lantern-slide projections. This resulted in a popularization of the practice and in an increased appreciation of scientific imagery. It was also acknowledged by writers for technical journals on photography in Germany, where the most significant advances in optical technology had occurred, that by late 1937 the market for photomicrographic materials was not limited to the professional scientist working in a laboratory but also included photographers and artists.
… By the mid-twentieth century a revolution had occurred in photomicroscopy. The electron microscope, which first became commercially available in 1935, was subjected to a rapid series of refinements over the next five years, to the point where it could enlarge to fifty times the magnification of the best light microscope. This would herald new technologies that we possess today, such as the scanning electron microscope, which not only has an extremely high resolving power but also reproduces the nooks and crannies in the microworld with an astounding sense of three-dimensionality.
It is this advance that has made Claudia Fährenkemper’s pristine, greatly enlarged photomicrographs of insects technically possible, while it is her unusual vision that makes their precision and fine formal and technical realization so visually compelling. Her images are distinguished from the typical entomological photomicrographic textbook illustration by her awareness of the architectonic possibilities of the specimens she photographs. Furthermore, she demonstrates a capacity to transform their details into something that appears to exist in isolation from their biological function. While playing simultaneously and ambiguously with the notions of both the beautiful and the grotesque in all of these photographs - which range from low magnifications of a factor of thirty times to a factor of three thousand times the size of the specimen - Fährenkemper ensures that we will be attracted to a different aspect of the microstructure in each one. In Sensory Hair of a Beetle 3000:1, for example, she brings to the forefront the delicate shapes that represent the sensory hair of the beetle. Her close-up examination of forms often endows the subject with sensuality reminiscent of the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. Wing and Wing Covers of a Beetle 300:1 attracts us because of its extraordinarily complex, intricate, and diverse architecture of horizontal strata and interconnecting shapes, which fold over and into each other. Like a warrior’s suit of armor, the heavily clad body of the insect in Beetle 40:1 is strongly sculptural, and Fährenkemper’s image draws our attention to the intricacy and purposefulness of design in nature.
While the neutrality of presentation, clarity of expression, and emphasis on the revelation of structure seen in Blossfeldt’s work is also evident in Fährenkemper’s photographs, she is less interested in a concept of archetypal forms in nature drawn from a theory of unified aesthetics in art. Her vision would appear to be closer to Max Ernst’s surrealist sense of the microcosm, in its creation of a parallel world of previously unimagined shapes and forms.
A student of Bernd Becher at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf, Fährenkemper has succeeded in achieving a monumentality of form with her interpretations of microscopic views of insects that rivals some of the stunning photographs of pithead structures made by her teacher and his partner, Hilla Becher. Like her predecessors, Blossfeldt and Renger-Patzsch, Fährenkemper has borrowed the tools and analytical values of scientific investigation to make art. In the end it is not the scientific significance that has meaning for her but the ability of the image to interpret this new relationship with the microcosmic world, to convey to the viewer a sensual experience of the perfect and complex tiny forms that constitute its inhabitants.

Text (excerpt) by Ann Thomas, Ottawa (National Gallery of Canada)
[Claudia Fährenkemper – Photomicrographs; HG.: Christiane Stahl, Alfred-Erhardt-Stiftung, Köln, Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1456-1]

> IMAGO Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

ARMOR

(English text below)
Die „ARMOR“-Arbeiten widmen sich repräsentativen Prunk- und Turnierrüstungen, die eigens für Kaiser, Könige und große Feldherren zwischen dem 15. und 17. Jahrhundert angefertigt wurden und die weltweit in bedeutenden Militaria- und Rüstungssammlungen anzutreffen sind.
Die Aufnahmen sind überwiegend in der Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien entstanden, aber auch in den Sammlungen des Braunschweigischen Landesmuseums, des Germanischen Nationalmuseums in Nürnberg und den Staatlichen Museen der Stadt Dresden. Aber auch die ungewöhnliche Ned-Kelly-Rüstung aus der State Library of Victoria im australischen Melbourne ist Bestandteil der Serie.

Form, Ausstattung und Emblematik der Rüstungen, ihre skulpturale Qualität faszinieren mich ebenso wie die Vorstellung, dass historische Personen diese Rüstungen als schützende Gehäuse leibhaftig getragen haben.

Die Aufnahmen sind als Brustportraits angelegt, da es mir nicht um die Dokumentation von unterschiedlichen Rüstungstypen geht, sondern um die skulpturale und materielle Präsenz der Harnische und somit der in absentia „Portraitierten“.
Aus ihrem musealen Präsentationszusammenhang entbunden, fotografiere ich sie vor neutralem, meist dunklem Hintergrund, analog und mit vorhandenem Licht mit einer Großformatkamera.
Wesentlich dafür, wie der ferne Träger uns als menschliches Wesen hier vor Augen tritt, ist die Konzentration auf das Brustportrait, die Wahl der Perspektive, welche die Ausrichtung (Blickrichtung) und die Neigung des Helmes bestimmen. Auf diese Weise lassen uns die Brustportraits der Harnische nicht nur auf vergangenes Leben zurückblicken, sondern sie bieten auch Anlass, unser aktuelles Dasein im historischen Kontext zu reflektieren. Gleichzeitig aber lassen sie durch Anklänge an Science Fiction auch eine Ahnung vom vage Zukünftigen vor uns erstehen.

„ARMOR“ erzählt von Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung, von Verletzlichkeit, aber auch von Macht und Reichtum. Die Rüstungen demonstrieren außergewöhnliches handwerkliches Können, großen Aufwand, sowie wechselnde Moden, denen auch die Gestaltung der Harnische unterliegen.

Was bleibt von uns Menschen in unseren Artefakten erhalten und überdauert materiell, aber auch als kulturelles Erbe, geistige und emotionale Hinterlassenschaft die Jahrhunderte?

Die zunehmende Bedrohung durch Gewalt und Terror weltweit war Auslöser für meine Beschäftigung mit Rüstungen und Rittern seit 2010.

Claudia Fährenkemper

> ARMOR Series images

ARMOR

(English text above)
The "ARMOR" series deals with the representative parade and tournament suits of armor, which were made especially for emperors, kings and great generals from the 15th to the 17th centuries and which are found in important militaria and armor collections worldwide.
The images mainly originated at the Collection of Arms and Armour in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, but also in the collections of such German museums as the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg and the Dresden State Art Collections. In addition, the unusual Ned Kelly armor at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia was also included in the series.

I was just as much fascinated by the form, features and emblems of the armor along with their sculptural quality as by the idea that historical figures in person had worn their suits of armor as a protective shell.

The images are all bust portraits since my intention was to "portray" the sculptural and material presence of the suit of armor and as such, the historical figure in absentia instead of documenting different types of armor. Released from the context of their museum presentation, I photographed them in front of a neutral, usually dark background using an analogue large-format camera and the ambient light.

While I was photographing, each long-gone bearer appeared before my eyes as a human character. It was the way I concentrated on portraying his bust, i.e. the choice of perspective, which defined the focus (the direction he was gazing in) and the tilt of his helmet. A character from the past was never just a lifeless shell. In so doing, the bust portraits of the men in armor not only allow us to look back on past human lives, but also give us a chance to reflect on our current lives. The occasional reminders of science fiction sometimes give us a premonition of the vague future. Some of them even become visions of science fiction characters in the future.

"ARMOR" relates faith, love and hope to us. It tells us of the vulnerability and also of the power and wealth. The suits of armor demonstrate unusual craftsmanship and great efforts. There were different designs that show how styles changed as time went along.

What will we as human beings leave behind in our artefacts and will they outlast us in a tangible form? What will be our cultural, spiritual and emotional heritage in the ages to come?

In 2010, the growing threat of violence and terror worldwide inspired my project on suits of armor and knights.

Claudia Fährenkemper


> ARMOR Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights)

Text by Chuha Chung

Claudia Fährenkemper and Josef Šnobl are artists from central Germany.

I was going through some information about the two but soon I had to give up.

To take/do photographs one must stand in front of the object. The light approaches me after reflecting off the object and gathers into a piece of image. Therefore it is very simple to make photographs. Whoever in possession of a tool that can accumulate light and have the will to stand ‘in front of it’ can easily take photographs. Thanks to such simple method, the entire world teems with photographers, and photography has deeply penetrated into the everyday lives of the individuals. Moreover, with the dazzling development of digital imagery the tool has become simpler yet much more diverse which led to the usage of photography in equipment other than cameras to further enhance its functionality. For instance, camera in conjunction with the phone, or attached to a moving object can capture what photographers/humans have not seen or have refused to see before. Then ultimately we live in an era where image/video is in excess/surplus and furthermore are forced to accept the utterly different reality (simulation). The question of ‘what is reality’ has been spreading further and before finding the answer to that question one must ask the ‘borderline’ in between. Like the body of a man with two objects inside (in the form of symmetry), we come to a point where we permit reality and fiction as one mass. Without borders.
However one question remains unchanged despite such profound shifts and transformations. If not for photographs made by fabrication, in other words, if it is not a picture, a photographer must stand in front of it no matter what. Why? Why does it have to be in front of it?

This is the issue Claudia Fährenkemper clings to. Her views are straight forward. Without being distracted her eyes pierce deeply into the essence of the object. Every subject she has worked on so far is in some form of medium. They are a tool to obtain very important energy for human life (Photograph 1), little bugs living in between humans and nature (Photograph 2) or objects that verify the conflict amongst humans (Photograph 3). Yet the social/political/ethical concept or meanings of these subjects are seemingly meaningless to her. She does not judge them. It is not the history or relationship of these subjects that matter to her, but she indulges in them as they are. Therefore what we can absorb from her photographs precedes the materialism within the form and surface of that subject. Since she has not come to a conclusion already, we will be trying too hard if we jumped in and gave meaning to the subject. However, I wish to reveal my desire to do exactly that at this moment.

The first subject of her work had been ‘machines’ in enormous sizes. The objects recreated on large scaled black and white prints yet appear as though they are living beings with warm blood pumping through their veins. Although they are machines standing still in calm atmosphere, they are placed at a workshop. The image is taken at the scene where the machines had been at work for a long period of time. That is why there are no disparate collision between the subjects and their background. The machines laid in the very quiet scenery simply appear as though they are metaphorically presenting their achievements. Thus we the viewers can discover that touching point linking us with the subject from that cold piece of metal, because the work of this machine will bring change to the human life. Also, the machine itself is an object of beauty. It is so because they are objects that underwent formative production and the fact that it stands with simple nature as its background suggests formativeness. The warmth coming from the crossing paths of superficial beauty and the relationship brings us the warmth of same degree to those of us who see her images. That is the power of photography.

It is always surprising to see a project of the same artist that is drastically different. It is so at least when it is not about the superficial looks but when it comes down to the issue of appreciation/sentiments felt when coming in contact with the image. Claudia Fährenkemper’s 'Armor' exhibited by Goeun Museum of Photography in Busan is a project of the same material. Steel. They are armors made from steel quite like the ones used to make the machines. I smell ‘blood’ from this project. These photographs stressing the objects seen from the side set in a dark background are armors with distinctive traces of long, long time. What are armors? They are instruments yearning for blood of the others, or already soaked in the blood of the others. A clear picture filled with the strong urge to fight each other in the middle of a battle field comes to my mind. It can be described in detail. On the surface of the armor are numerous traces. Regardless of whether this armor was summoned to the battlefield or not, we can travel into the battle following these traces. At the same time, like in the 4D theaters, we may sense the chaotic smell of blood. Still the eyes of photography are accompanied by the fascinating texture. From the surface of this particular work that was probably exposed to a continuous lighting, the beautiful sense of texture and strong hues distinctive of fiber-based paper in black and white as well as various effects created by the artist in the dark room exposing the image to light are all evident. It functions as a device that filters or releases the bloody scent of war that we just smelled moments ago.

The method used by 'Imago' that will be exhibited together with these projects is even more microscopic. Yet the approach on the insects that live on the border of the seen and unseen is very macro. It is because the work overcomes the limits of our eyes, using tools to get closer than a certain distance allowed to human beings. Do all things on the borderline require a tool? To uncover the insides of the ground that can’t be seen, to explore again the invisible traces of the past, and as in this case to see certain small objects that exist but cannot be sensed by the eyes, we do need equipment. Claudia Fährenkemper uses the equipment as a subject and as a channel. In other words, subjects and tools are interfused together without a border. Just inside this deranged border huddles Claudia Fährenkemper with her large eyes raised up to look at us. That is the form of 'Imago'. Such method of hers delivers us with a certain illusion that is different from the image acquired from the previous relationship we had so far with the bugs. It is not just about the meaning coming from the visible forms but also the image that also shows the subjective feelings that I can imagine. Through the image depicting the insects, I can once again return to the original stereotype that I already had. Perhaps this is the opposite of ‘Equivalent’ that Alfred Stieglitz tried so hard in his last years to stress. It is not about being reminded of something similar after seeing an object, but about creating a stereotype for the object through the prejudice that resides in me already.

In this way, multiple attitudes dwell in Claudia Fährenkemper’s work(s).
ChuHa Chung(Photographer, Prof. of Paekche Institute of the Art)

> ARMOR Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Fermyn Woods Wild Flower Project 2009

   Du möchtest wissen, was es in meinem Garten gibt ...
    Henry Fox Talbot, 1817

(English text below)
Die jüngste Werkserie von Claudia Fährenkemper offenbart sich zunächst in Form einer medialen Rückvergewisserung. Fotogramme von Pflanzen- und Blumenmotiven, die am Findungsort unmittelbar von Sonnenstrahlen belichtet wurden, hinterlassen auf dem Bildträger einen Abdruck in Originalgröße, der in seiner Farbigkeit bizarr gehalten ist. In der Anschauung stellt sich der Abdruckcharakter der Fotogramme bewusst zwischen Anachronismus und Modernität. Im Sinne von Georges Didi-Huberman folgt die bildkünstlerische Strategie hierbei nicht mehr dem Diktat der ähnlichkeit, sondern der Unmittelbarkeit des Ausdrucks, den man wiederum allegorisch deuten kann.

Fermyn Woods Wild Flower Project 2009 - schon im Titel deklariert sich die eigentümliche Bildserie als Resultat eines zeitlich und topografisch determinierten Unterfangens. Sie entstand innerhalb von vier Wochen im Sommer 2009 auf dem Terrain der Fermynwoods Gallery, gelegen zwischen Leicester und Northampton in Mittelengland. Als Gegenstand der Bilddokumentation diente eine geschützte Wildblumenwiese im alten Forst von Fermynwoods.

Der künstlerische Eingriff folgte vor Ort: Claudia Fährenkemper drapierte die vorgefundenen floralen "Objects trouvées" zügig auf lichtempfindliches Silbergelatinepapier und setzte dieses, abgedeckt mit einer Glasplatte, der Sonnenbestrahlung aus. Die lediglich fixierten Fotogramme, bei denen es sich ausnahmslos um Unikate handelt, entstanden jeweils in einem Zeitraum von ein bis drei Stunden.

In ihrer Motivwahl und Technik referieren die Bilderzeugnisse ihrer archaischen Pflanzenerkundung nicht zufällig auf die Ursprünge des fotografischen Verfahrens, das insbesondere in England zur ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts entwickelt wurde. Neben dem Gelehrten Henry Fox Talbot, der bereits in den 1830er Jahren mit Pflanzenmotiven experimentierte, die nach dem „Zeichenstift der Natur“ entstanden waren, widmete sich nahezu zeitgleich auch die britische Botanikerin Anna Atkins monochromen Studien zur fotografischen Erfassung von Naturobjekten. Im digitalen Zeitalter greift Claudia Fährenkemper diese Bildreferenzen aus der Frühzeit der Fotografie auf, um sie mit Kalkül gegen die Folien der Moderne auszuspielen. Hierbei wendet sie Klassifizierungsmuster an, wie sie aus der dokumentarischen Fotografie des 20. Jahrhunderts überliefert sind. Beispielhaft zu nennen seien hier etwa die Pflanzenaufnahmen von Karl Blossfeldt. Naturwissenschaftliche Ordnungskriterien, die in den nüchtern bezeichnenden Titeln der Bilder anklingen, suggerieren bei Fährenkemper, die bei Bernd und Hilla Becher an der Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf studierte, zudem eine Nähe zur Konzeptkunst. Allerdings werden anstelle tradierter lateinischer Termini zeitgenössische britische Pflanzenbezeichnungen verwendet, um die sensitive Dimension der Objekte zu betonen. Creeping Thistle, Selfheal, Meadowsweet…

So verwundert es nicht, dass die Fotogramme des Fermyn Woods Wild Flower Project aufgrund ihrer kompositorischen Drapierung vor allem als bildästhetische Artefakte wahrgenommen werden wollen. Claudia Fährenkemper hinterlegt dabei eine fotografische Spur, die in hohem Maße energetisch ist. Denn die unter der Wärmeeinwirkung ausdehnende Pflanzenflüssigkeit erzeugt auf dem Fotopapier eine dunkle „Aura“, weswegen die Pflanzenteile, die im Belichtungsprozess dicht anliegen, noch deutlicher aus dem Bild herauszutreten scheinen. Ebenfalls von Ambivalenz geprägt ist der unterschiedliche Abstand einzelner Pflanzenteile, der bewusst zwischen Präzision und Auflösung von Strukturen und Formen bzw. zwischen Flächigkeit und Plastizität changiert. Mitunter mutiert der Abdruck gar zu einem vermessenen Ausdruck des Schönen. So bleibt etwa die Farbgebung der Fotogramme irritierend, die in merkwürdig abgestuften Orange- und Lilatönen eine eigene, apokalyptisch anmutende Künstlichkeit generiert.

© Christoph Schaden, 2010

> Pflanzenfotogramme Series images


(German text above)
Claudia Fährenkemper's most recent work series presents itself first in the form of medial self-ascertainment. Photograms of plant- and flower-motifs, which were directly exposed to the rays of the sun at the site where they were found, impart to the image-carrier an original-sized imprint which is bizarrely maintained in its coloration. In its appearance, the imprinted character of the photograms is deliberately situated between anachronism and modernity. In the sense of Georges Didi-Huberman, this pictorial-artistic strategy no longer follows the imperative of similarity, but strives instead for an immediacy of expression which can, for its part, be interpreted allegorically.

Fermyn Woods Wild Flower Project 2009 - already in its title, this peculiar series of pictures declares itself to be the result of a temporally and topographically determined undertaking. It came into being during four weeks in the summer of 2009 on the terrain of Fermynwoods Gallery, located between Leicester and Northampton in the English Midlands. A preserved meadow of wildflowers in the ancient forest of Fermynwoods served as the focus for the pictorial documentation.

The artistic intervention occurred on site: Claudia Fährenkemper quickly draped the floral "objets trouvés" upon light-sensitive, silver-gelatine paper which she covered with glass and exposed to the sun's rays. The merely fixed photograms were generated in a period of one to three hours.

It is not by chance that, in their motif-selection and technique, the pictorial productions of the artist's archaic plant investigation refer to the origins of photographic procedure, which was developed during the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly in England. In addition to the scholar Henry Fox Talbot, who already in the eighteen-thirties was experimenting with vegetational motifs which were created in accordance with the "pencil of nature," at almost the same exact time the British botanist Anna Atkins was devoting herself to monochromatic studies for the photographic recording of natural objects.

In the digital era, Claudia Fährenkemper takes up pictorial references from the early age of photography in order to calculatedly set them against the backdrops of modernism. For this purpose, she uses classification patterns such as have been handed down by the documentary photography of the twentieth century. Of exemplary significance here are the photographs of plants by Karl Blossfeldt, for instance. In the case of Fährenkemper, who studied with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, the criteria of scientific arrangement which echo in the matter-of-fact titles of the pictures suggest, moreover, a proximity to Concept Art. But in place of traditional Latin terminology, contemporary British designations for plants are used in order to emphasize the sensitive dimension of the objects. Creeping Thistle, Selfheal, Meadowsweet ...

Thus it is not surprising that the photograms of the Fermyn Woods Wild Flower Project , because of their compositional draping, are intended to be perceived above all as pictorial-aesthetic artifacts. In this endeavor, Claudia Fährenkemper leaves photographic traces which are energetic to a high degree. For the expansion of the plant sap in response to heat creates a dark "aura" on the photographic paper, so that the parts of the plant which lie close together in the exposure process seem to emerge from the picture all the more clearly. Likewise marked by ambivalence is the varying distance between individual parts of the plant in a deliberate oscillation between precision and the dissolving of structures and forms, or between two-dimensionality and plasticity. From time to time, the imprint is even transformed into a presumptuous expression of beauty. Thus, for example, irritation is engendered by the photograms' coloration which, in a peculiar gradation between shades of orange and lilac, generates its own individual, seemingly apocalyptic artificiality.

© Christoph Schaden, 2010

> Pflanzenfotogramme Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Planktos

(English text below)

(…) Das Rasterbild entfremdet das Objekt der Biologie vom Leben. Es ist nicht einfach ein Spiegel der Lebensformen, es ist ein Konstrukt, in dem Kontraste verteilt sind, die erst sekundär ein Bild generieren, das dann eine vermeintliche Realität vor Augen stellt. In der Tat findet sich so eine neue Sachlichkeit, in der der Photograph aber nicht mehr einfach bei den Dingen, sondern zunächst nur im Bild ist.

In dieser Entfremdung des Bildes, die so befremdlich wirkt und gerade in diesem Fremden, das doch bekannt erscheint, bezaubert, werden die Bilder von Claudia Fährenkemper auch zu einem Kommentar der Bildornamentik eines Ernst Haeckel, der in seinen dekorativ gebrochenen Wirklichkeitswahrnehmungen in der Tat noch meinte, das wirkliche Sein, dessen eigentliche Erscheinung, seine Realität, schön (im Sinne seiner Wahrnehmungskultur) zu sein, darzustellen. Davon ausgehend kommentieren Fährenkempers Fotografien Haeckels bildliche Darstellungen, wie es die Künstlerin auch in ihrer Ausstellung im Ernst-Haeckel-Haus 2005 in Jena tat. Wo Haeckel mit seinen Illustrationen natürlicher Entitäten die Realität (Objektivität) darzustellen suchte, reillustriert er im Grunde genommen die kulturellen Einschätzungen seiner Zeitperiode. Dies wird offensichtlich, wenn man Haeckels "Kunstformen der Natur" den Fotografien Fährenkempers gegenüberstellt.

In dieser Abbildung eines Naturschönen steht Fährenkemper dann auch in der Tradition Karl Bloßfelds, Albert Renger-Patzschs, Alfred Ehrhardts, August Kreyenkamps und Carl Strüwes. Aber ihre Bilder sind schon auf Grund des Mediums, das sie nutzt, viel weiter versachlicht als die Darstellungen der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ihr Medium ist ein Computer, der auf ihren Photofilmen ein Bild generiert. Dieses Bild rekonstruiert er aus den Messungen von Spannungsdifferenzen und Energieprofilen, die bei richtiger Einstellung das in ihnen Dargestellte schon im Bild mit einer Aura belegen, die das Objekt in seine neue Bildwirklichkeit einhebt.

Insoweit sind die formvollendeten Mikrophotographien von Claudia Fährenkemper im doppelten Sinne künstlich. Sie sind es zum einen, da die Motivation der Künstlerin eben künstlerisch ist. Zum anderen dokumentieren sie nicht, was sich in ihnen darstellt, sie dokumentieren vielmehr, in welchen Mitteln sich in ihnen etwas darstellt.

Auf einen ersten Blick wirken Fährenkempers Darstellungen wie der gigantische Floh, den Robert Hooke in seinem ersten Buch zur Mikroskopie darstellte. Überwältigt von der Vergrößerung des Mikroskops, illustrierte Hooke – wie schon angedeutet – seinen Floh denn auch im Maßstab seiner virtuellen Präsentation auf einer Tafel im Maßstab DIN A2.

Claudia Fährenkemper operiert differenzierter. Es ist nicht die naive Begeisterung, Neues zu sehen, es ist vielmehr ein Ausloten der eröffneten Dimensionen, in dem die Künstlerin auch dem Wissenschaftler etwas zu sagen hat.(…)

Text von Prof. Dr. Dr. Olaf Breidbach (Ernst-Haeckel-Haus Jena) in: 'Claudia Fährenkemper: PLANKTOS';
ed. Natascha Mehlhop, Brussels Flamingo, DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen, 2008


> Planktos Series images 


(…) The SEM image alienates the biological object from life. SEM does not simply produce a mirror reflection of life forms, but a construct in which contrasts are spread in such a way that, only secondarily, are images generated that then become visible to us as a presumed reality. And indeed a new objectivity takes place, in which the photographer is not simply with the objects but initially only within the picture.

This defamiliarising effect of images is so distorting and yet so enchanting in its strange but familiar presence that Claudia Fährenkemper’s pictures almost seem like a commentary on Ernst Haeckel’s pictorial ornamentation who, in his decoratively fractured view of reality as being beautiful (in the sense of his perceptual culture), indeed believed he was portraying real existence, its actual appearance, its reality. To present an entity in terms of such an aesthetic culture was not just illustration. Microscopic pictures were the truth of nature. He took the essences of entities to be condensed in an aesthetic representation, one that revealed how things really are. To this extent Fährenkemper's photographs comment on Haeckel's pictoral representations, which she actually carried out in her exhibition at the Ernst Haeckel Haus in Jena 2005. Where Haeckel with his illustrations of natural entities intended to represent the reality (objectivity) of nature, he, in fact re-illustrates the cultural assessments of his time. This becomes obvious when contrasting Haeckel's Art Forms of Nature with Fährenkemper's photographs.

In this portrayal of natural beauty, Fährenkemper is in line with the tradition of Karl Blossfeld, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Alfred Ehrhardt, August Kreyenkamp and Carl Strüwe. But because of the medium she uses, her pictures are much more objective than the depictions of the first half of the 20th century. Her medium is a computer that generates an image onto her photographic films. It reconstructs this picture by measuring voltage differences and energy profiles that, if correctly set, invest what they depict in the image with an aura that elevates the object to its new pictorial reality.

In this respect, the perfectly designed microphotos of Claudia Fährenkemper are artistic twice over. They are artistic in the first place because the artist’s motivation is artistic. Secondly, they do not document what is portrayed in them – they document in what medium something in them is portrayed.

Prima facie, Fährenkemper’s images look like the gigantic flea that Hooke depicted in his first book on microscopy. Overwhelmed by the magnification of the microscope, Hooke – as already noted – also illustrated his flea on the scale of its virtual presentation, on a 40x60 cm sized plate.

Claudia Fährenkemper’s approach is more differentiated. It is not a naïve enthusiasm at seeing something new, but rather a sounding out of the dimensions that open up in which the artist also has something to say to the scientist.(…)

Text by Prof. Dr. Dr. Olaf Breidbach (Ernst-Haeckel-Haus Jena) in: 'Claudia Fährenkemper: PLANKTOS';
ed. Natascha Mehlhop, Brussels Flamingo, DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen, 2008


> Planktos Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Phantombilder des Unsichtbaren

(English text below)
... Mit dem seit Mitte der sechziger Jahre in der naturwissenschaftlichen Forschung breit eingesetzten Rasterelektronenmikroskop wurden die Grenzen der Beobachtung und Darstellung der Mikrowelten erheblich erweitert. Die eigentlich bis in den atomaren Bereich reichenden Vergrößerungskapazitäten werden von Claudia Fährenkemper bei weitem nicht ausgeschöpft, da die Bilder ab dem Faktor 3000 x ihre Konkretheit verlieren. An die Stelle des sichtbaren Lichts bei einem herkömmlichen Mikroskop tritt hier ein Elektronenstrahl, der die Objektoberflächen Bildpunkt für Bildpunkt, Zeile für Zeile abtastet und ein äußerst schärfentiefes Bild erzeugt. Der plastisch-räumliche Eindruck der Bilder beruht auf der unterschiedlichen Helligkeit von OberflächenDetails, er kann durch das Drehen und Kippen der Präparate variiert werden. Es scheint, als käme das »Licht« aus einer bestimmten Richtung, doch hängt der Kontrast einzig von der Neigung der Objektoberfläche zu dem auf sie treffenden Elektronenstrahl ab. Auch die wie solarisiert erscheinenden Kanten und Ränder der Objekte werden so erzeugt. Herausragende Strukturen erscheinen hell, tiefer liegende Partien hingegen dunkel; Farben können nicht wiedergegeben werden.
Diese Bilder lassen sich an einem Arbeitsbildschirm beobachten und mit einer Rollfilmkamera (Format 6 x 7 cm) in hoher Auflösung nahezu rasterfrei aufzeichnen. Von den Negativen werden auf herkömmliche Weise Abzüge auf Barytpapier in den Formaten 40 x 50 cm bis 80 x 100 cm gemacht. Hier liegt also wiederum ein Dimensionssprung vor. Die monumentale Größe der Bilder bestimmt die Wahrnehmung, ermöglichen es dem Betrachter doch erst diese Formate, sich bis ins Detail in die Motive zu versenken. Insgesamt ist dies ein hybrides Verfahren der Bildherstellung, das digitale und klassische Fotografie miteinander kombiniert. Mit dem Mikroskop kann man sich in Vergrößerungsstufen beliebig weit dem Objekt nähern; am Bildschirm wird durch die Wahl der Perspektive und des Ausschnitts das Motiv isoliert; die feinstkörnigen und extrem scharfen Vergrößerungen mit hohem Tonwertumfang, den satten Schwärzen und gleißend hellen Spitzlichtern ermöglichen die Monumentalisierung der Bilder.

Die Bilder von Claudia Fährenkemper haben ihren Ursprung zwar in der realen Dingwelt, doch ist dieser Teil der Welt – es sei nochmals betont – dem menschlichen Auge eigentlich nicht zugänglich. Aus diesem Bereich des Unsichtbaren werden Phantombilder gewonnen. Den Erscheinungen jenseits des Sichtbaren, jenseits auch des Vorstellbaren wird durch die spezifische Qualität der Aufnahmen Präsenz und Evidenz verliehen. Dabei tragen die Fotografien selbst ebenfalls den Charakter eines Phantoms in sich: Der Begriff »Phantom« bedeutet unter anderem »Trugbild«, und tatsächlich sind diese Bilder trügerisch, suggerieren sie doch auf höchst eindrucksvolle Weise, man könne in die Mikrobereiche vorstoßen, könne sich deren Erscheinungsformen aneignen.
...
Text (Auszug) von Ludger Derenthal, Berlin (Museum für Fotografie)
[Aus: Claudia Fährenkemper – Photomicrographs; HG.: Christiane Stahl, Alfred-Erhardt-Stiftung, Köln, Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1456-1]

> IMAGO Series images 


(German text above)
Phantom Images of the Invisible
The limits of observation and representation of the microworld have been expanded substantially by the scanning electron microscope, which has been employed on a broad basis in scientific research since the mid-1960s. The capacity of this microscope to produce magnifications reaching down to the atomic level are far from being exhausted by Fährenkemper, since the images cease to be concrete beyond a magnification factor of 3,000 x. An electron beam takes the place of the visible light used by a conventional microscope, scanning the surfaces of objects pixel by pixel, line by line and producing an image with a strong depth of focus. The plasticity and three-dimensionality of the pictures derives from the varying brightness of the surface Details and it can be adjusted by rotating and tilting the specimen plate. Although the “light” seems to come from a particular direction, in fact the contrast depends solely on the tilt of the surface of the object in relation to the electron beam hitting it. It is this that makes the borders and edges of the objects look solarized. Protruding structures appear to be bright, while parts lying deeper seem dark; colors cannot be reproduced. These images can be viewed on a screen and recorded in high resolution using a roll-film camera (in 6 x 7 cm format) whereby the grid is almost invisible. Prints are made from the negatives on baryta base paper in the conventional way in formats between 40 x50 cm and 80 x 100 cm, producing yet another dimensional leap. The monumental size of the pictures affects our perception of them, yet only such formats allow the viewer to really see the Details of the motifs. All in all this represents a hybrid method of image creation, combining the techniques of digital and traditional photography. Using a microscope permits the photographer to zoom in on an object choosing any degree of magnification. The motif is then isolated on the screen by selecting the perspective and the section desired, while the extremely fine-grained and sharp magnifications with a broad spectrum of tones, ranging from areas of deep black to glitteringly bright highlights, allow the monumentalization of the images.
Although Fährenkemper’s images have their origin in the material world, it should be stressed once again that they portray a part of that world not accessible to the human eye. From the realms of the invisible phantom images are drawn.2 Images beyond the boundaries of the visible, even beyond the imaginable, are endowed with immediacy and clarity through the specific quality of the photographs. As a result the photographs themselves acquire the character of a phantom. The term “phantom” also means “illusion” and these images are indeed illusionary, for they suggest in a highly spectacular way that one can penetrate micro-realms and make their images one’s own.
...
Text (excerpt) by Ludger Derenthal, Berlin (Museum für Fotografie)
[From: Claudia Fährenkemper – Photomicrographs; HG.: Christiane Stahl, Alfred-Erhardt-Stiftung, Köln, Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1456-1]

> IMAGO Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Metamorphosis

In ihren Mikrofotografien bevorzugt Claudia Fährenkemper, sicherlich auch geprägt durch ihre Lehrer Bernd und Hilla Becher, den Zugang in Werkgruppen. Diese heißen Embryo, wenn sie Pflanzensamen aufnimmt, oder Habitus, wenn sie das ErscheinungsbiLd von Kristallen untersucht und deren Würfelschichtungen in unheimlich wirkenden, geometrischen Tiefenräumen präsentiert. Doch stellt sie keine typoLogischen Reihen auf, sondern sucht in jeder Aufnahme am Rasterelektronenmikroskop nach dem individuellen, passenden Bild.
Ihre Gruppe Metamorphosis, die Aufnahmen von Amphibienlarven versammelt, forscht nach den anthropomorphen Formen von Larvenextremitäten. Als klassische, großformatige Schwarz-Weiß-Abzüge im eigenen Labor hergestellt, wirken auf ihren Fotografien die Larven mit ihren silbrig-weißen Konturen vor tiefschwarzem Hintergrund wie fremdartige, aber doch merkwürdig vertraute Wesen. Denn die Hände und Beine erinnern an die Gliedmaßen von Menschen, die einem unheimlichen Mutationsprozess unterworfen wurden, der durch die irritierende Oberflächenstruktur der Körperteile ins Fantastische gesteigert wird. Kleine Verunreinigungen der Präparate, noch nicht ausgeformte Körperpartien im Embryonalzustand, Brüche und Risse in den Präparaten, Verwachsungen und Wucherungen - all dies trägt zur nachhaltigen Verwirrung des Betrachters bei. Diese Fotografien hätten den Surrealisten gefallen, der Mund einer Froschlarve etwa erscheint wie die Überblendung von zwei der berühmtesten Motive der surrealistischen Kunst, von Jacques-André Boiffards Fotografie Gros orteil, die 1929 in der Zeitschrift Documents publiziert wurde, und Max Ernsts zyklopischen Auge "La roue de La Lumiere", aus der Frottagenserie Histoire naturelle, die 1925 entstand. Fährenkempers Fotografie amalgamiert diese Motive in dem mit doppelter Zahnreihe bewehrten Maul zu einer unheimlichen, mysteriösen Vision eines so nie gesehenen Lebewesens.

Für die Autoren der Zeitschrift Mikrokosmos bieten die Arbeiten Claudia Fährenkempers einen idealen Untersuchungsgegenstand, stellen sie doch besonders eindrücklich ihren spezifisch künstlerischen Zugriff heraus: "Das Besondere Liegt darin, wie die Motive aufgenommen wurden. Der Blickwinkel, unter dem die Objekte betrachtet wurden, ist nicht - wie ein Wissenschaftler vorgehen würde - von den darzusteLLenden Fachinhalten geprägt, sondern eher vom optischen Eindruck, den ein BiLd auf den Zuschauer ausüben soll. Das wird im wesentlichen Maß davon unterstützt, dass die Kontraste ganz außergewöhnlich sind. Kein Naturwissenschaftler käme auf die Idee, seine Objekte in einem derartig steilen und damit sehr eindrücklichen Kontrast wiederzugeben, wie es bei den Fotos von Claudia Fährenkemper die RegeL ist."

Text von Ludger Derenthal

> Metamorphosis Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau


 

Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau

from 1988-1993
(English text below)

... Der Weg in die Mikrowelten führte bei Claudia Fährenkemper über die Landschafts- und Technikfotografie. Neben Wüsten- und Felsenbildern aus den USA entstanden ab 1988 mit der Großformatkamera Landschaftsaufnahmen im deutschen Braunkohletagebau. Diese Fotografien lebten vom morphologischen Vergleich zwischen Industrie- und Kulturlandschaft, zwischen der vom Menschen kultivierten und der von ihm ausgebeuteten Natur. Es lag nahe, auch das technische Gerät zu fotografieren, das diese radikale Umwandlung der Landschaft in den Gruben bewirkt. Neben Detailaufnahmen, die sich auf die konstruktiven Strukturen der Bagger konzentrieren, sind es vor allem die großformatigen Schwarzweißfotografien der in ihrer vollen Ausdehnung erfassten Braunkohlebagger, die sie als technisches Gerät in einer vollständig vom Menschen erschaffenen Landschaft vorführen, mit denen sich Claudia Fährenkemper bis 1993 beschäftigte. Anders als bei den von ihren Lehrern Bernd und Hilla Becher fotografierten Industrieanlagen kam es ihr aber nicht darauf an, die Geräte aus ihrem Kontext herauszupräparieren, um sie so für strukturelle Vergleiche nutzbar machen zu können. Für sie ist es vielmehr die Darstellung der Eimerketten- und Schaufelradbagger, der Absetzer und Abraumförderbrücken in ihrem Umfeld, in der von ihnen geschaffenen und damit für sie einzig möglichen Landschaft, die den Vergleich innerhalb der Serie erlaubt.
Die Ausmaße der Fördergeräte und Tagebaugruben sind mit dem menschlichen Auge kaum zu erfassen, es fehlt die Erfahrung, die sich am Rande eines Tagbaus ungeheuer weit öffnenden Horizonte zu bewältigen. Daher suchte Claudia Fährenkemper Situationen, in denen an den Baggern stehende Arbeiter oder Ingenieure als Maßstab fungieren konnten – ein klassisches Verfahren der Fotografie, das sich schon in den ersten Reise- und Architekturaufnahmen des 19. Jahrhunderts bewährt hatte. Doch muss man auf Fährenkempers Aufnahmen die Menschen nun suchen; sie scheinen durch ihre Winzigkeit die ihr eigenes Bild schaffende, abstrahierende Qualität der Fotografie geradezu zu demonstrieren. Stellvertretend für die Menschen finden sich auf den Fotografien gelegentlich auch Lastwagen oder Geländefahrzeuge, die es dem Betrachter ermöglichen, sich in das Bild einzufinden.
Der Sprung in den Dimensionen wurde von Fährenkemper in den folgenden Jahren noch weiter zugespitzt. Am Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe fotografierte sie 1993 mit dem Rasterelektronenmikroskop Mikromotoren und -turbinen, die oftmals noch nicht einmal die Größe eines Sandkorns haben. Sie bewegte sich damit vom Größten zum Allerkleinsten, zu den mit dem menschlichen Auge nicht mehr wahrnehmbaren Dingen. Dennoch konnte sie strukturelle Verwandtschaften zwischen den riesenhaften Details der Zahn- und Schaufelräder der Braunkohlebagger und den Mikrogeräten ausmachen. Auch hier bedurfte es der Demonstration der Größenverhältnisse; zum Vergleich bot sich der Kopf eines Käfers an, eine in der wissenschaftlichen Fotografie oft gewählte Kombination. Wieder ist es ein Dimensionssprung, der die Aufnahme zu einem geradezu emblematischen Bild für das bisherige fotografische Schaffen von Claudia Fährenkemper macht. Unser Wissen um die Winzigkeit des Käfers verträgt sich schwer mit den monumentalen Fühlern und Greifern, mit den Beißwerkzeugen und den sich gewaltig vorwölbenden Facettenaugen. Mehr als die vom Menschen geschaffenen Mikrogeräte faszinierten Claudia Fährenkemper fortan die Formen der Natur.
...
Text (Auszug) von Ludger Derenthal, Berlin (Museum für Fotografie)
[Claudia Fährenkemper – Photomicrographs; HG.: Christiane Stahl, Alfred-Erhardt-Stiftung, Köln, Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1456-1]


(German text above)

... Claudia Fährenkemper came to the microworld via landscape and technical photography. Alongside images of deserts and rocks in the USA, she began in 1988 to photograph the landscapes of German brown coal mines using a large-format camera. These photographs draw their effect from a morphological comparison between industrial and cultivated landscapes, between nature that has been cultivated and nature that has been exploited by man. A further logical extension of this idea was to photograph the machinery that had brought about the radical transformation of this landscape into strip mines. In addition to detailed shots focusing on the structural features of the digging equipment, Fährenkemper devoted herself until 1993 above all to producing large-format black-and-white photographs of fully extended brown coal excavators, which show machinery in a completely man-made landscape. Unlike her teachers, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Fährenkemper was not concerned with photographing industrial facilities out of their context for the purpose of structural comparisons. What was important for her was the portrayal of the bucket-chain and rotary-bucket excavators, the stackers and the conveyor bridges in their own environment, in the landscape created by them and for this reason the only landscape possible for them, to permit comparison within the series.
The dimensions of the conveyor machinery and strip mines can hardly be appreciated by a human eye unaccustomed to taking in the extremely wide horizons that open up beyond the periphery of a strip mine. For this reason Claudia Fährenkemper tried to photograph workers or engineers standing next to the excavators who could serve as a comparison of scale—a classic photographic technique that had already proven successful in the first travel and architectural photography of the nineteenth century. However, one has to look hard to find the people in Fährenkemper’s pictures, for they are so tiny that they seem virtually to demonstrate the abstract quality of a photograph creating its own image. In place of people some of the photographs show the occasional truck or off-road vehicle, enabling the viewer to get his bearings within the picture.
Fährenkemper took her leaps in dimensions to further extremes in the following years. In 1994 she used a scanning electron microscope to photograph micro-engines and turbines that were often even smaller than a grain of sand at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (research center Karlsruhe). Having photographed the very largest objects she could find, she now moved to the very smallest, to machines invisible to the human eye. Nevertheless, she succeeded in finding structural similarities between the gigantic details of the gearwheels and rotary buckets of the brown coal excavators and the micro-apparatus. Here, too, a comparison of scale was necessary, for which Fährenkemper chose the head of a beetle—a combination often used in scientific photography. Once again it is the leap in dimensions that makes the picture virtually a symbol of Fährenkemper’s photographic work to date. It is difficult to reconcile our knowledge of how tiny the beetle is with the monumental antennae, claws, and pincers and the vastly bulging compound eyes. From this point on Fährenkemper was fascinated more by the forms of nature than by man-made micro-apparatus.
...
Text (excerpt) by Ludger Derenthal, Berlin (Museum für Fotografie)
[Claudia Fährenkemper – Photomicrographs; HG.: Christiane Stahl, Alfred-Erhardt-Stiftung, Köln, Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit, 2004, ISBN 3-7757-1456-1]




Giganten der Maschinenwelt
Text von Reinhold Happel
> Go to additional text


Claudia Fährenkemper. Fördergeräte im Braunkohlentagebau
Text von Dr. Ulrika Evers
> Go to additional text


Fotografische Dokumente der Industrialisierung
Text von Dr. Claudia Gabriele Philipp
> Go to additional text


> Fördergeräte im Braunkohlentagebau - Opencast Mining Machinery Series images



> Fathoming Dimension | > The Origin of Form | > Mikrokosmos | > Armor | > Zen-Sehen (Thoughts and Sights) | > Pflanzenfotogramme | > Planktos | > Imago | > Metamorphosis | > Fördergeräte im Braunkohletagebau

Samurai
2016 onwards


> more

Samurai CC 01-16-1

   

Armor
2011 onwards


> more

Armor W 03-11-2

   

Imago
1996-2009


> more

Head of a Fly / Fliegenkopf 11-02-7

   

Pflanzen-
fotogramme
2009-2010


> more

Wild Angelica 1

   

Planktos
2005-2006


> more

Diatomee 41-05-01

 

top

Embryo
2001-2006


> more

Plant Seed / Pflanzensamen 83-03-2

   

Habitus
2002-2004


> more

Sodium Chloride / Natriumchlorid 71-03-8

   

Metamorphosis
2000-2002


> more

Hands of a Salamander Larva / Hände einer Molchlarve 44-02-1

 

top

Bagger 292
1990-1991


> more

Schaufelrad

   

Fördergeräte
im Braunkohlen-
tagebau

Opencast Mining Machinery
1988-1993


> more

Eimerkettenbagger, Witznitz 1993

   

Tagebau
Garzweiler
1988-1990


> more

Garzweiler 1989-5-7

   

Tagebauland-
schaften
(Farbe)

Opencast
Landscape
(Color)
1989-1992


> more

Tagebau Garzweiler 1989-8-1

   

Garzweiler
Dorf
1989


> more

Belmen Schule 1988-6

   

USA
1987-1989


> more

Death Valley 1

   

USA
1989-1991


> more

Page, Arizona, 1989

 

top

top

 

top

 

top

 

top

 

top

 

top

 
 
   

top

 
 

© Claudia Fährenkemper
www.claudia-faehrenkemper.com
HOME |  NEWS |  WORKS |  BIOGRAPHY |  TEXTS |  CONTACT - Disclaimer - Impressum |