Sebastian Lemm’s photography caught my eye with its heavy shapes and high contrast, but it was Jörg Colberg’s description of the work as “very conceptual” that landed me on Lemm’s website.

Perusing the images – prior to reading the artist’s statement – I gleaned that Lemm is deeply interested in representations of landscape. His most recent work depicts the interaction of shapes and aspects of nature (trees, leaves, grass, shadows, light) and looks to have a lot to do with what’s there and what isn’t. Visually rich, for certain – but an immediate grasp of the concept eluded me.

Not content to merely guess as to Lemm’s intent, I read his statement, and was pleased to find that it directly addressed the most difficult aspect of communication via conceptual photography. An excerpt:

… I am fascinated by seemingly random structures in the natural environment and I see parallels to patterns or events in my own life. … I am attracted to subtleties of human interactions, the subconscious and physics’ theories about dimensions that are outside of our perception. Although these ideas may not be inherently obvious in my images, they do have a significant impact on my artistic process. (emphasis mine.)

The attempt to reveal alternate realities via a medium whose primary function is the replication of perhaps our most immersive sense (sight) is no easy task, and one that I’ve personally grappled with on occasion. Lemm has earned himself a new fan with his humble language, and what I believe is an invitation to use his photographs as the beginning of a perceptual exploration, as opposed to a closed question and answer of vision and image, a role all too often assigned to photographs.

>> Sebastian Lemm (via Conscientious), Image Credit: Strata #3 by Sebastian Lemm