Field Guide: Photographs by Jochen Lempert
showcases beauty, mystery of nature
Cincinnati Art Museum, October 17, 2015–March 6, 2016
CINCINNATI – September 18, 2015 – The first major U.S. museum exhibition featuring German artist
Jochen Lempert’s photographs will be on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum from Oct. 17, 2015–March 6,
2016. The show will include more than 100 hand-printed black-and-white photographs spanning 15 years.
Originally trained as a biologist, Lempert began making artistic photographs of animals, plants, and
natural phenomena during the early 1990s in Hamburg, Germany. “Lempert’s unique background allows
him to depict the world with both scientific rigor and a poetic sensibility,” said Brian Sholis, Cincinnati Art
Museum Curator of Photography.
The artist uses both conventional and experimental processes, and the results are anything but traditional
nature photos. Out in the field, Lempert uses his 35-mm camera to chart human-animal interactions, the
patterns made by birds and insects, or the play of sunlight and shadow. But he also brings the outside
world into the studio, making camera-less photograms of leaves and algae or letting bioluminescent
species like fireflies expose photographic paper. The exhibition will also include his ongoing 25-year
project to document all 80 known taxidermy specimens of the Great Auk, a flightless North Atlantic bird
that went extinct in 1844.
Lempert often arranges his images in sequences or grids to highlight similarities, underscore how
classification defines what we see, and encourage close looking. The photographs, in a wide variety of
sizes, will be placed on the walls unmounted and unframed in an installation devised on-site by the artist
and curator.
This survey of Lempert’s photographs includes new work made on the East Coast and in Cincinnati
during May 2015. His behind-the-scenes visits to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, the Museum
of Natural History & Science at Cincinnati Museum Center, and the Lloyd Library and Museum allowed
him to cast new light on these familiar local landmarks.
Several artworks made in Cincinnati will be
included in the show.
Field Guide: Photographs by Jochen Lempert is sponsored by PNC Bank and Darlene and Jeffrey R.
Anderson. It will be on view in Galleries 103, 104 and 105. The exhibition will travel to the Contemporary
Art Gallery Vancouver, where it will be on view April 15–June 12, 2016.
