Jochen Lempert. Honeyguides and Milk Teeth
For his first museum exhibition in Belgium, the German photographer Jochen Lempert has taken over four rooms at the MACS with his delicate photographs of nature. When faced with the poetic intensity of each individual photograph, we are initially struck by the simplicity of the means that are used, such as the 35 mm camera with a normal focal length, the home-made, black-and-white prints, the various formats of baryta paper that the artist places against the white background of the walls without any frames, or even the simple photograms of plants or animals. The evocative illustrative power of the sequences of photographs, depending on how they are arranged, demonstrates a great mastery of composition and installation. These constellations of images, some of which are presented in showcases, form a body of work that invites both contemplation and interpretation, through an inexhaustible web of connections generated by the similarities or contrasts of shapes, tones and subjects. After studying biology with a specialisation in dragonflies, Jochen Lempert turned to photography at the end of the 1980s and extended his meticulous observation of the animal, plant and human world with an extreme sensitivity to infinitesimal phenomena and minute existences: the traces of tiny frogs, the luminous flight of fireflies, a gentle breeze in dead leaves, a constellation of freckles on a shoulder… any poetic, photosensitive ecology of discreet life that is close to hand.
Jochen Lempert was born in 1958 in Moers (Germany). He lives and works in Hamburg.
Podcast
Démêler les pinceaux
This episode features a recording of the lecture given by Alexander Streitberger, Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain and Director of the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre, on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to the work of German photographer Jochen Lempert at the Musée des Arts Contemporains in Grand-Hornu.
Born in 1958 in Moers, Germany, Jochen Lempert first trained as a biologist. In 1979, he co-founded the Schmelzdahin group, which made experimental films exploring the processes of decomposition of celluloid film. From the late 1980s onwards, Jochen Lempert devoted himself to photography. Using very simple means, he pursued a meticulous and poetic practice in which he captured the slightest details of the nature around him in black and white.
In this talk, Alexander Streitberger explores the links between film, photography, biology, the natural sciences and aesthetics in Jochen Lempert's practice.
