Fine Art: Honorable Mention 2015 (professional)
Wet Plate Collodion Landscape - "the stream" by Christian Klant (Germany)
ENTRY DESCRIPTION
The collodion wetplate process is, unlike the „modern“ black-and-white film material, sensitive to the blue and ultraviolet spectrum of light – which is invisible to the human eye. Therefore the colors and light flow present themselves differently in wet plates than we usually see them. It took some time until I started seeing like the process itself.
With this new view it is now possible for me to convey the magic, that I perceive when being in nature, with my photographs. With the wet plate landscape series „SOURCE“ I am inviting the beholder to follow me to the silent oases of our times. Places that nourish. Places that touch something deep inside of us.
For that aim, I travel through all of europe with my wet plate equipment and my mobile darkroom. The photographs are being taken with an old indian wooden camera as 8,5×15“ tintypes.
AUTHOR
Born 1980 in Bonn, Germany, grown up in the Rhineland. At first business studies and diploma thesis with honors. After three and a half years as a consultant for sustainability and specialist for corporate culture analysis came the shift. What had been a professional hobby became occupation.
Autodidactically Christian Klant developed what had begun with the first own camera in his childhood. Moved to Berlin and established his first studio.
Emphasis of his international commercial work as well as his artwork lies on the portrait and reportage photography. The latter especially in the realm of sustainability and social business. As a photographer he is known for increasing the visiblity of changemakers and for telling stories with his pictures that are worth being told. He believes that an emotional and authentic visual language holds a certain potency, that deeply touches humans.
2012 the organisation Ashoka honored him with the fellowship „storyteller in residence“. His works were published many times and shown to the public at several exhibitions.
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