Photographs by Jochen Lempert

A series of stills taken by photographer and biologist Jochen Lempert in his book Plantes Volatiles presents five images, each capturing a person walking through a green space – perhaps a park or a public garden. It could be read as a study of movement, taken from a vantage point at an observational distance. This sense of detachment is visually reinforced by a blurred branch extending into the foreground of each frame. Perhaps this series seeks to cultivate a planetary perspective – one that places the human figure within a broader context warranting reflection?
For Planetary Peasants, Jochen Lempert has created a site-specific intervention for the ZNS Central Depository of the Natural History Collections. It comprises an arrangement of analogue black-and-white photographs, hand-printed by the artist in his own darkroom. The photographs on the wall are conceptually linked to images displayed in two tabletop vitrines placed in the reading room of the collection. The installation borders a glass door offering a view into the adjacent ‘skeleton room’ of the depository, that can be illuminated at the push of a button. The neighbouring shelves also contain a generous selection of publications produced by Die Neue Brehm-Bücherei, whose covers feature black-and-white animal photographs, some of which served as inspiration for Lempert’s display cases. The boundary between scientific and artistic research here is fluid.