Solo Exhibition
»Six Degrees of Freedom«
Jessica Backhaus
Opening: Friday, September 9, 2016, 19h
Exhibition: September 10 – November 19, 2016
Artist Talk with Jessica Backhaus & Ann-Christin Bertrand (Curator, C/O Berlin):
Friday, October 21, 2016, 19:30h. Admission free.
Opening hours: Tue-Sat 12-18h
Admission free
Description
In her latest photographic series Six Degrees of Freedom, Jessica Backhaus investigates universal questions of human existence. Taking her own biography as a point of departure, she asks what it means to know the roots of one’s own existence. She is interested in the extent to which one can reconfigure these normally predetermined roots. From a certain point in her life – at first unconsciously, then in an increasingly determined fashion – the photographer, who grew up in a family of artists, embarked on a search for her own origins. In the process, she visited the sites of her childhood and youth and filled in the gaps of her memory. Backhaus’s photographs symbolically record the essence of this search and of the various periods in her life, yet she simultaneously manages the balancing act of leaving the images open for the viewer. Her photographs are metaphors and operate in opposition to classical social documentary photography, oscillating between realism and abstraction.
“Six degrees of freedom” is her sixth photobook at Kehrer Verlag and deals with the great universal themes of background, yearning, identity, and destiny.
–
Jessica Backhaus was born in Cuxhaven, Germany in 1970 and grew up in an artistic family. At the age of sixteen, she moved to Paris, where she later studied photography and visual communications. Here she met Gisele Freund in 1992, who became her mentor. In 1995 her passion for photography drew her to New York, where she assisted photographers, pursued her own projects and lived until 2009.
Jessica Backhaus is regarded as one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary photography in Germany today. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin.
To date, seven publications to her name; Jesus and the Cherries, 2005, What Still Remains, 2008, One Day in November, 2008, I Wanted to See the World, 2010, ONE DAY- 10 photographers, 2010, Once, still and forever, 2012 and Six degrees of freedom, 2015, all published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, Berlin.
Her photographs are in many prominent art collections including Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Germany, ING Art Collection, Belgium, Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA and the Margulies Collection, Miami, USA.
Jessica Backhaus is represented by Robert Morat Galerie in Hamburg and Berlin, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Galerie Anja Knoess in Cologne, Stieglitz 19 Gallery in Belgium, Wouter van Leeuwen Gallery in Amsterdam and Micamera Gallery in Milan.
Jessica Backhaus
Six degrees of freedom
Kehrer Verlag, 2015
Artists: Jessica Backhaus
Authors: Caroline von Courten, Lars Mextorf, Jessica Backhaus
Hardcover
22,8 x 27,4 cm
132 pages
64 color and b/w ills.
English/German
ISBN 978-3-86828-667-0
39,90 Euro
Part of the EMOP Berlin 2016 – European Month of Photography Berlin 2016. Discover more Festival highlights on PiB under the tag #EMOP Berlin 2016!
—
Teil des EMOP Berlin 2016 – Europäischer Monat der Fotografie Berlin 2016. Entdecke weitere Festival-Highlights auf FiB unter dem Tag #EMOP Berlin 2016!
Event Details
[postinfo meta_key=’enable_postinfo’ meta_value=’1′ default=’1′ class=’se-dbox’][postinfo meta_key=’enable_venuebox’ meta_value=’1′ default=’1′ id=’venuebox’ class=’se-vbox’]
