Talk

JESSICA BACKHAUS
“VON ‘JESUS AND THE CHERRIES’ ZU DEN ‘CUT OUTS’”

Friday, September 23, 2022, 6 pm

Location: Fotografie Forum Frankfurt

A conversation with photo-artist Jessica Backhaus and Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director of FFF about the artistic development of her work projects.


With all of her photo-artistic projects, Jessica Backhaus sets out in search of new means of expression, and always another fascinating interplay between the representation of reality and enigmatic abstraction emerges. The artist focuses on objects and situations of everyday life, and through her camera she repeatedly views the world from unusual perspectives. Mise-en-scene, abstraction, and intuition are also the main aspects in Jessica Backhaus' most recent work “Cut Outs” (2021). What role does color play in it and in other works? And how does one find one's own artistic path?


The talk will be held in German.

Jessica Backhaus(*1970, D/USA) is based in the tradition of classical documentary photography. She depicts everyday objects and still-lifes in such a way that they open up additional levels of meaning and reality to the viewer; in this way, the photographer emphasizes the metaphorical meaning of what is depicted. Jessica Backhaus approaches the motifs in an immediate way. She perceives the world around her with great precision and sensitivity; light and color, as well as their painterly implementation, are the artist's central means of expression. Her work to date is a fascinating interplay between depiction of reality and enigmatic abstraction.

 

At the age of sixteen Jessica Backhaus moved to Paris, where she later studied photography and visual communication. Here she met Gisèle Freund in 1992, who became her mentor. Today, Jessica Backhaus is considered one of the most distinguished voices of contemporary photography in Germany. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, and Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau. She has published numerous exceptional monographs, including Jesus and the Cherries (2005), What Still Remains (2008), One Day in November (2008), Six degrees of freedom (2015), A TRILOGY (2017), and Cut Outs (2021), all published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg. Jessica Backhaus' photographs are in numerous international museum and private collections. She is represented by the Berlin gallery Robert Morat, among others.


JESSICA BACKHAUS (WEBSITE)

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