Is this fiction or reality? This is the question underlying the series – the images provoke the viewer question what they see. Is this a picture of a warm rain forest or a cold German mixed forest? Are these animals really living in this forest or is it a giant zoo?
Frank lived for years near the forest and he often travel to Bielefeld (a city near the famous forest ‘Teutoburger Wald’). He photographed for a long time in the forest in misty conditions.
He was fascinated by the silence and the peaceful atmosphere there. One day he was watching a deer there. He was blown away by this mood. But in the german forest you can watch only a few species and not so often. So he had the idea to create these moods artificially with more and exotic species. All images of this series consists of two photographs. The forest images are all analog photographs, who he develop by his own with the classic chemical process and scan the negatives. The animal images are mostly digital taken in a zoo. The rest is craft work with photoshop. At first he photographed it wildly (both – animals and forest), but by now he take care what animal poses he can use with his forest images and vice versa.
About Frank Machalowski
Frank Machalowski is a photographic artist and photographer, born in Berlin and live and work in Leipzig – Germany. After studying Economics in Berlin and applying himself to various trades he work as a freelance photographer and artist since 2011. He first got into photography as a hobby and at the beginning he was mainly into digital photography, but then he started shifting back to film as he found the charming characteristics and atmosphere of film photography to be more fascinating. Today he even develop and print some of his photos by his own.
In his artistic progress he always looking for other representation of frequently seen pictures, like in his series ‘multiexpo’. He’s fascinated by the contrasts of urban life and deserted landscapes (he try to put this in his project wald//stadt). He simply want that people looking at his work and start to ask themselves, how on earth he did that and they getting stuck on the picture. All of his projects were fully or involving made with analog technique.
Some photographs of his series ‘monster’, ‘multiexpo’ and ‘tierwald’ were shown in Germany, France, Spain, UK, USA and Italy at renowned galleries and festivals. He’s part of a permanent collection of the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris. Since 2014 he’s a part of the project “Berlin-Photography” represented by the Carpentier Gallery in Berlin. It is a collective of 32 photographers who are concern with the city of Berlin.
This year end of may he’s a part of the first analog photography festival in Barcelona, Spain. There he show 20 of his most known photographs from the series ‘monster’, ‘multiexpo’ and ‘tierwald’. [Official Website]
