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The Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz, which is awarded biennially, will be bestowed on German artist Jochen Lempert in 2017.
The award will be presented by Dr. Günter Riegler, City Councillor for Cultural Affairs. The laudatio address will be held by Maren Lübbke-Tidow.
Jochen Lempert, born 1958 in Moers, lives and works in Hamburg. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at international institutions including Sprengel Museum Hannover (2017); S.M.A.K., Ghent (2017); Izu Photomuseum, Clematis Oka (2016); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Centre Pompidou, Metz (2016); Between Bridges, Berlin (2015); Cincinatti Art Museum, Cincinatti (2015); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2014); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2013); and Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2010).
Jochen Lempert’s work has been published in Camera Austria International No. 108 / 2009 and Camera Austria International No. 124 / 2013, and was exhibited at Camera Austria as part of “Milk Drop Coronet. 30 Exhibitions on the Virtuosity of Thingness” in 2010/11.
The jury founded their decision to honour Jochen Lempert with the Camera Austria Award on the following statement:
“Jochen Lempert (b. 1958) has a degree in biology and since the early 1990s has been devoted to work characterized by the correspondence and contextualization of individual photographs in larger groups. The perception of nature and animals in systems of representation used in scientific research here involves the individual observation of the world of flora and fauna within an environment configured by humans. Analogue black-and-white photographs give rise to a fascinating and complex, yet inevitably incomplete inventory of morphological studies that confronts the taxonomic classification of animals and plants with very subjective documentation. Phenomenology and research-based comparison meet here, especially in the idea of the photographic ‘trail,’ which understands photography as a documentary medium of movement and change, as well as of reconstruction, development, and demonstration of correlations. Cross-references, associations, and correspondences within the grouping of individual photographs with an accentuated object nature also grant new perspectives on our own place within those structures of order and chance so characteristic of our world. In this sense, Lempert’s work unleashes a wealth of visual poetry that is reflected by distinctive visual language, which, not least, gives his oeuvre a unique position within contemporary photography.”
Members of the jury:
Annette Kelm, artist, awardee 2015, Berlin
Jens Maier-Rothe, author, Berlin
Vanessa Joan Müller, curator at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
Reinhard Braun, publisher Camera Austria International, Graz
The Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz was established in 1989 and is bestowed every two years on an artist who has published a noteworthy contribution in the magazine Camera Austria International and has made an important contribution to contemporary photography.
The prize-money is EUR 14,500.
Previous recipients of the Camera Austria Award include:
2015: Annette Kelm (Germany); 2013: Joachim Koester (Denmark/US); 2011: Heidrun Holzfeind (Austria); 2009: Sanja Iveković (Croatia); 2007: Marika Asatiani (Georgia); 2005: Walid Raad (Lebanon); 2003: Aglaia Konrad (Belgium); 2001: Allan Sekula (US); 1999: Hans-Peter Feldmann (Germany); 1995: David Goldblatt (South Africa); 1993: Seiichi Furuya (Japan/Austria); 1991: Olivier Richon (Switzerland/GB); and 1989: Nan Goldin (US).
The award ceremony will be accompanied by the preview of the exhibition Un-Curating the Archive: Based on a Reference Collection by Nicole Six & Paul Petritsch (Part II: 1990–2002).