Ellwangen - Fluss Jagst - Daguerreotype (2021) Photography by Valerius Geng

Valerius Geng is a German photographer from Satteldorf. In his artistic work he mainly deals with analogue photographic techniques such as daguerreotype, ambrotype and cliché verre. His works are created through experimentation and research into photographic processes that were primarily created in the 19th century. These works are not an attempt to exactly imitate the photography and style of the time, rather he is interested in building a bridge between different visual worlds from the past to the present and sometimes combining them with each other.

The word photography translated from ancient Greek means something like “drawing with light”. This light comes through the camera obscura, falls on the screen in a mirror image and leaves its touch of the moment on the mirror-polished silver plate. Photography is always a past moment that never returns. This moment can only be captured and temporarily saved through photography. A daguerreotype or an ambrotype is preferred by the artist as an analogue process because it is a very original and authentic method of depicting light and shapes using chemical compounds.

A completely different topic, which the photographer deals with just as intensively, is the creation of an abstract image, which is created 100% cameraless and analogue. His series “Geometry of Chaos” seeks a balance between chaos and order. Our world has emerged from chaos, the forms of living things are changing and becoming increasingly complicated through evolution. The artist's actual goal is to create and recreate this complexity and the versatility of the forms of the material and its unpredictable geometric nature in the photo laboratory.

• Nationality: GERMANY
• Date of birth : 1974
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary German Artists