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- color photograms on black and white paper
Staying in a cottage directly besides a wildflower meadow in summer 2009 I wanted to preserve the plants individuality and singularity around me directly and fast with very poor instruments. I decided to use the simple photogram process from early times of photography when Fox Talbot did his photogenic drawings of fern and Anna Atkins these of algae.
I collected the plant specimen, put them on old silver gelatine paper and arranged the single plant in its best shape, pressed it with a thick piece of glass and let it exposure by sunlight outside on the bottom for 1-3 hours. Finally I took glass and plants away, fixed and washed the paper.
During the image process there is an amazing reaction of the plants substances and fluids with silver gelatine paper areas just around the plants, caused by sunlight and warmth under the glass. The pressure of the thick piece of glass helps to evoke a clear shape of the plant and some brilliant details of blossom and leave structures with a rich variety of red, brown, yellow, grey colours beside the white shape of stem and blossom. The impression is in a way ghostly, the real object is gone but its character and traces of life and energy still remains in the image.
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My photomicrographs reveal a world, which is only visible trough a scanning electron microscope. My aim is the sensual experience of filigree constructions and morphological details as sculptures and spaces of the microcosm.
Photmicroscopy gives us an idea of relationships in our world. The conceptual work in series makes comparisons possible and shows the variety and individuality of forms.
All series refer to the human being, remind us of embryonal and foetal development, of portraits, gestures and habitation. The microcosm seems to be strange for us, but in fact there are surprising similarities to our cosm.
The series of insects is called IMAGO (latin "image"). In zoology: adult insect which has passed through all states of development.
The series of amphibian larvae is called METAMORPHOSIS (greek), change, transformation of forms. In zoology: a development in which the hatching animal is very different from the final shape. Most of the insects but also vertebrates, like froges, are first in the state and mode of living as a larva and later change into a pupa.
The series of seeds is called EMBRYO (greek), germ of a living being. In botany: the developed plant in the grain of seed. In zoology and anthropology: the developing organism out of a fertilized egg cell, being in a cover, an egg shell or a body.
The series of crystals is called HABITUS (latin), appearence and behavior, habit. Shape of human beings, animals, plants and crystals.
The photomicrographs show the original objects with a magnification of 30 to 3000 times.
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Claudia Fährenkemper. Fördergeräte im Braunkohlentagebau, ed. Ulrika Evers, exh. cat.,Kreismuseum Peine
Claudia Fährenkemper. PHOTOMICROGRAPHS, ed. Christiane Stahl, Alfred-Ehrhardt-Stiftung, Cologne, with essays by Ann Thomas and Ludger Derenthal, Ostfildern-Ruit
Glühwürmchen? Strahlentierchen? Königskerze? Wunderliche fotografische Portraits von Claudia Fährenkemper, ed. Sabina Leßmann, with essays by Sabina Leßmann and Olaf Breidbach, exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Bonn
Claudia Fährenkemper. IMAGO – Insect Portraits, eds. Friedrich-Hundt-Gesellschaft, Münster, Art Galerie Siegen und Kunstverein Unna, DruckVerlag Kettler, Bönen
Claudia Fährenkemper. Opencast Mining Machinery, (with essays by Christoph Schaden and Daniel Stemmrich), exh. cat. Kunstverein Salzgitter
Hypo Vereinsbank, Munich (G)
Kreismuseum Peine (G)
Musée de L’Elysée, Lausanne (CH)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (CAN)
Hans Hansen, Hamburg (G)
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund (G
Portland Art Museum, Oregon (US)
Martin Margulies, Miami (US)
Kunstmuseum Bonn (G)
Rheinisches Industriemuseum, Oberhausen (G)
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara (US)
Wildling Art Museum, Los Olivos (US)
Sprengel Museum Hannover (G)
Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Berlin (G)
