All images are © Copyright by Sebastian Lemm and courtesy of the Peer Gallery in New York and the David Weinburg Gallery in Chicago

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On Thursday, March 20th, I attended an opening at Peer Gallery, which is on 26th Street in the heart of the Chelsea Art District in Manhattan.  Titled “Editing Nature,” the exhibition featured images of the forest by NewYork-based German photographer Sebastian Lemm.  The forest as a photographic theme would not usually interest me; however, Lemm uses juxtapositions of tree limbs and trunks as well as layering to turn the photographs into abstract paintings of bark and leaves.  Some of them have black backgrounds with a feeling of the forest at night, and others offer daytime with a white background.  And some of the larger images (60” x 48”) made me feel I was actually in the forest.  During the evening I had a chance to speak with Sebastian Lemm about his work.


Robert Schaefer: You are German; what brought you to the United States?

Sebastian Lemm: I initially visited New York in the mid 90’s and was just blown away by the intense energy I felt everywhere in the city. I wanted to be part of it,  so I moved here from Berlin in 2000. I planned to return to Berlin after a year but somehow I have been stuck here for over seven years now!


RS: Has the experience been positive?

SL: Yes, but New York can be very tough sometimes with a constant struggle to survive. This gets me going though and I try to seize all the opportunities I have here which I won't get anywhere else. I am very happy with what I have achieved so far, and I am curious to see what lies ahead for me.


RS: Do you feel that New York is actually "The United States?"

SL: It feels more like the whole world is coming together here. I know it's a cliché, but this one is actually true: people from every corner of the world are trying their best to fulfill their dream here. New York has a very inspiring environment that I have not felt anywhere else in the US.


RS: Tell me about your background. Where were you born and raised?

SL: I grew up in the western part of Berlin, Germany in the 70’s and 80’s. I went to school and art school there (UdK, Berlin University of the Arts) where I graduated with a diploma (MFA equivalent) in 1999.


RS: Were you always interested in art as you were growing up?

SL: I always liked art class as a kid and went to a clay modeling class for several years in my early teens. My dad could draw really well and I've always admired that. My parents took me more to concerts rather than museums or galleries. It was much later that I became interested in contemporary visual art. I came to the  art school (Berlin University of the Arts) with the desire to become a photographer; my studio practice and art history courses  introduced me to many different concepts of visual art.


RS: What first got you into photography?

SL: In high school I took my first photography class and was introduced to the darkroom. I was immediately hooked and loved composing the image and making good gelatin silver prints.  Also, I studied all the masters of photography and their techniques.  When I entered art school, I wanted to take a more commercial route but also created several installations and more experimental sculptural work. I took a broad spectrum of classes dealing with a variety of media as I previously mentioned.  Photography was one of my main interests but took up only a small part of my work. It was only after coming to New York that I found a path within photography that I wanted to pursue in my work.


RS: Have any of the teachers you've had been particularly important in your development?

SL: The most inspiring teacher was Professor Gisela Scheidler. She taught at a different art school in Potsdam (suburb of Berlin) that I traveled to once a week to take her class—it was well worth it because she taught us to open our eyes, see beyond the images we took and helped us understand our own and other artists’ work.  In art history (Berlin University of the
Arts) Professor Hermann Wiesler comes to mind.  His classes were very intimate and his  wealth of knowledge and personal insight was very inspiring.


RS: What a small world we live in.  Professor Wiesler was a very good friend of mine whom I visited many times in Berlin.  I actually attended one of his lectures, and you are right, they were excellent.  I was sorry to learn of his death several years ago.


RS: How did you get into your current series of "Editing Nature?"

SL: “Editing Nature” is actually not the title of my series, but the title of my current solo exhibitions at the David Weinberg Gallery in Chicago and at the Peer Gallery in New York. My series 'subtraction' (at Peer Gallery) and 'schattenseite,' translated as ‘dark side’ in English (at David Weinberg Gallery and Peer Gallery), are shown there. The title “Editing Nature” was inspired by an essay about my work written by Michael Amy. I think it clearly describes what I do in several of my series: I re-conceptualize my photographs of nature by adding and removing information to visualize what is not immediately visible, something only I can see clearly within me.


RS: Could you elaborate a little more on the actual images and specifically how you achieve them?

SL: In both series, 'schattenseite' and 'subtraction,' the idea of isolation is very important. I use either flash lights to rip nature out of context during the shooting process or I erase all background to paper white in the digital editing stage. This is an obsessively painstaking and almost painterly process that requires several iterations on a pixel level.  While the images in 'subraction' are not comps, in 'schattenseite,' I digitally double-expose some of the branches to create a haunting, rhythmic pattern. The doubling of the branches is like déjà-vu, a re-occurrence of the exact same thing—it is a trick of the mind. These alterations of the image are like a re-structuring process or a topographic re-mapping of something familiar.

Both 'black' and 'white' have no visual information, no image value. There is simply nothing—a void. It is a sense of loss too, although the void does not show what is lost since the memory of it (in the photographic sense) is erased. I am interested in the 'subject' in that void and its structures and topography. How it defines itself without any perspective, nothing to hold on to, without up or down, without heaven or earth, so to speak. By eliminating information,  I not only draw the attention to what is left but also to what is no longer there. There are hints as to what is missing. It is up to the viewer to 'fill in the blanks'. Viewers have no choice but to contemplate that loss and absence—what has been there or what will be there. So, the work is essentially about that void and how to cope with it.


RS: Do you have other series of images that have other themes?

SL: Looking back, I can see a concise direction throughout all of my work. It's always been about finding images and meanings that go beyond the visible, suggesting a parallel subconscious experience of what surrounds me. Even my series 'filtrate' and 'traveler' (I and II) are related. Here I show fake black & white landscapes—a meditation on parallel worlds and the boundaries between them. 'filtrate' mimics our subconscious, selective process of adding/subtracting information as we 'remember' things. To me, these older series still are an experience of nature in a wider sense—as a reflection of my inner self. Developing the concept and the visuals does not always follow a chronological order. Understanding my own work and putting it into perspective with previously created work could take years.


RS: What has been some of your most important experiences in photography thus far in your career?

SL: The preparation of my solo shows has probably been the most intense and eye-opening experience so far, helping me gain more insights into my work. And of course meeting people and getting feedback and support from individuals and organizations such as the Goethe-Institut has been very rewarding.


RS: Could you cite any photographers or other artists who have been personal inspirations to you in your photography?

SL: I relate more to painters or artists working in other visual media than I do to photographers.  I am fascinated by the work of Rodney Graham, and I like the visual language of German painters Frank Nitsche and Tim Eitel. I saw dark, grey paintings by Rumanian artist Adrian Ghenie last year that still stick in my head. Strong visuals and a compelling concept is what draws me into the work. Inspiration and influence for my own work though,  comes from my own life - what I see and read and what I experience as well as what's on the news.


RS: Do you think you will ever return to live in Germany or some other European city?

SL: For now, I am very happy where I am. It is a good thing that I am detached from the heritage of 'German Photography' here. I visit Berlin and other places in Germany once a year, and shoot a lot of my work there as well. It is important for me to work both in Germany and in the US, but I am more drawn to the energy level here in New York. Other cities in Europe other than Berlin don't really interest me as a place to live.


RS: What might influence you to relocate to Berlin?

SL: Only personal relationships would influence these decisions.


RS: Where do you see your work going in the future?

SL: The concepts I have developed in my current work still have a lot of room for further exploration. Whether this will go into the direction of nature or not remains to be seen.


A full-color 44-page exhibition catalogue, 'Editing Nature,' with an essay by Michael Amy published in conjunction with Lemm's solo shows, is available at these galleries:

Peer Gallery: www.peergallery.com
David Weinberg Gallery: www.davidweinberggallery.com
Artist website: www.sebastianlemm.com

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Robert A. Schaefer, Jr. is a founding member of Photoworkshop.com, and has been a fine-art photographer for over 30 years. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well as the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, France. In 1999—2000 he had a 25-year retrospective of his work at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama, his home state. His exhibition, Two Sides of the Coin—which deals with his German family and the Holocaust—was held at the DeFrog Gallery in Houston, TX in March, April and May 2006 as a part of Fotofest. Two images from this exhibition were then purchased by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Most recently he had a one-person exhibition (November 10,  2007 to January 8, 2008) at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery, Alabama. This work is a body of documentary images of a farmer in North Alabama. Schaefer writes about photography for Double Exposure and  The Photo Review in Pennsylvania.  He teaches photography in the Department of Continuing and Professional Studies at New York University. His work is represented by the Domeischel Gallery, Ltd. in New York City and the DeFrog Gallery in Houston, Texas.
 
Robert can be contacted at rasjrpro@earthlink.net  and www.schaeferphoto.com

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