Hakage

If the Japanese word Hakage literally translates as “the shadow of leaves,” the pairing of its two ideograms (葉影) unfolds a far richer poetic field. It evokes not only the traced outline of a leaf in light, but also the shifting interplay of shadow and brightness beneath foliage, the shelter of trees, the hidden spaces where insects dwell. Through his exhibition and the eponymous book, Jochen Lempert draws us into the dense, subtle life of this vegetal and animal world. True to his practice, he composes sequences of images in which a web of formal, thematic, and conceptual correspondences gradually emerges. Through variations of scale, an emphasis on the materiality of the photographic medium, and a gentle, often understated humor in the dialogue between images and their site of exhibition, he leads us beyond representation toward a more intimate, sensorial apprehension of nature.

The book Hakage gathers the most recent harvest of a body of research developed over the past years around photogram and foliogram techniques. A special edition of eighty numbered and signed copies is accompanied by Tanpopo, where a row of life-size dandelions rises upright, held in place by the unfolding structure of a leporello.