Photograph on paper
Signed on the front.
One of the early works from the series, when, having grown up in the slightly more restrained palette of Northern Germany's small scale fauna, I was just so amazed by suburban Brisbane's subtropical bio-diversity that I spotted and collected dead insects wherever I was: I did not go out of my way to find any of the creatures in this composition.
I was equally amazed at how the desktop scanner, vastly proliferating in people's homes, at that time, could act as the intermediary between conventional macro-photography and microscopy, finding the sweet spot between extraordinary detail and still staying on 'normal' human eye-level, saying:
You could see this all this with a good magnifying glass, just like you used to, when you were still curious about The World. Be Curious, again!
Document|monument is the result of investigating meaningful ways to document the evidence of ‘micro-wildlife’ in my daily, largely suburban life: Dead insects, feathers, bones and seeds – things resisting decomposition.
I find and collect these relics on my daily routines within suburban and greater Brisbane.
This is a childhood trait which resurfaced upon moving to Brisbane from Hamburg, both as response to the incredible bio-diversity in an urban environment, and as a need to re-establish a primal connection to my natural environment.
The process of finding and engaging with these found objects keeps my perception and awareness tuned to what for most people is invisible or meaningless litter. Spotting a beetle, feather or seed generates deep interest, childlike joy, safety and hope - through its' immediate presence and the implicit connection to species, habitat and world.
For me this is a survival mechanism, grounding and connecting me to this place and to the ecological and metaphysical reality of being member of a species, cohabitating with other species, on a planet.
The second part is the image making where I attempt to convey the above through magnification and composition. The documents become monuments to local life forms and bio-diversity, giving them consideration as evolutionary ancestry and ecological equals.
Magnification draws the viewer in, rewarding their curiosity with a high level of wonderous detail. The hyper-realism of the scanner sustains and amplifies the inherent surrealism of the subject matter.
The works are simple in an attempt to make images that stand the test of time, and to provide space for the subjects to unfold the profundity and implications of their existence in this place: Justified and ancient.