Foreign Landscapes, Photography by ©Leon Billerbeck, 2017
Leon Billerbeck
Foreign Landscapes
“Foreign Landscapes“ is a collection of photographs depicting hazy, mystical but colorful shapes and forms, which remind of wide natural landscapes. Each photograph has its own strange atmosphere, while all of them share the tension between harmony and undefinable matter. Therefore, the images create a surreal world, which can neither be grasped nor defined, leaving the viewer as a stranger with the desire to enter this foreign micro cosmos. To illustrate my relationship to my older brother, who is a successful business consultant, I took photographs of his recent diagrams, statistics and charts, which he works on every day. Those colorful forms and graphics are normally used to simplify and show complex financial relations and data as precise as possible. The Process of photographing these presentations and composing new images, cuts loose all of the intended functionality and sense. Hence, they were brought into a new aesthetic context, in which they become my approach to enter my brother‘s world as well as my expression of skepticism and distance.
Biography
Born July 1995 in Hamburg , Germany ,I have always been passionate about music and instruments which has finally led me to the creative world of writing lyrics, drawing and taking photos. Obviously I have started working creatively quite early but discovered photography as an artistic medium just when I attended Bauhaus university. I have traveled lots in western Europe, USA , Indonesia , Panama and New Zealand to discover that communication and awareness are the key to all impression and expression; and therefore are major reasons why I want to make art. In March 2017 I participated in the Studio Vortex Artist Residency led by Antoine D’Agata, which had a remarkable influence on my personal relation to photography and my presence as an artist. Now I am in my 4th semester of media arts at the Bauhaus university in which I have put my focus on photography, whereas I also realize Video and sound design projects to explore trans media relations and their possibilities.