What is that?
Monsters of the deep sea, dragons or mythical creatures –
what do these bizarre shapes remind you of?
In fact, they are not invented creatures,
but shells left behind from a natural transformation process:
the cocoons of a butterfly.
Overlooked in everyday life, inconspicuous in their origin,
they nevertheless carry an astonishing presence.
Remains of a metamorphosis that is complete –
and therefore becomes visible.
Together with the artist Magdalena Hohlweg, new contexts are created for these preserved rarities.
What was previously part of a hidden biological process,
becomes an object of perception.
I photograph these structures enlarged and isolated in such a way that their form, structure and strangeness become visible.
The continuous sharpness reveals a beauty that often remains hidden to the naked eye.
This reveals something unexpected:
a quiet, almost archaic aesthetic.
Functional forms that appear both strange and familiar at the same time.
These “creatures” are not figures.
They are traces of a process.
And perhaps that is precisely why it is so fascinating.
Cooperation
The photographs were created in connection with works by Magdalena Hohlweg . In her artistic contexts, inconspicuous things are detached from their usual perception and placed in new contexts.
The cocoons no longer appear merely as biological shells, but as independent forms: strange, vulnerable, precise and of surprising beauty.
Image sequence
The photographs show the cocoons as individual apparitions.
Each form has its own tension: transparent, armored, vulnerable, alien.
The series is less a natural history observation than an approach to forms that have emerged in secret.
Exhibitions / Context
Photographs from this series were shown in connection with the exhibition
“Romanticism 2.0 – Magdalena Hohlweg“
at the Museum im Schloss Bad Pyrmont.
Further works were shown in the context of the exhibition
“[UN]scheinbare Welten“
at the Museum Bad Arolsen.