Jochen Lempert studied Biology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn (1980–1988) and Cinema and Cine-performance with the Schmelzdahin group (1978-1988). His career as a photographer, which began in the early 1990s, is clearly influenced by this background.

He shows considerable interest in the process of photography itself. His work focuses on the confluence and the links between humanity and the natural world, but he shies away from the idealisation of nature and from environmentalist claims. His goal is to call attention to the way in which nature lives within the urban world. This can be seen clearly in birds flying overhead, and less obviously in the presence of insects and the subtlety of raindrops; it can be seen in an educational, documentary form in natural history museums. His projects are presented as photographic installations tailored to the needs of each exhibition venue to bring viewers into a network of 'poetic visual associations'. Those associations come from the combination of small and large-format images, anecdotal images juxtaposed with images that tend towards abstraction, isolated images and images grouped into mosaics, or into forms like a series of film negatives.

Lempert works with 35 mm analogue negatives in black and white, with no post-production, developing them by hand. He uses thick, heavy paper which is neither pressed nor framed, so that the results look like preliminary sketches or failed test pieces. This gives each photograph a weight and a clear, objectual materiality with tactile qualities that in many cases make it look line a drawing. His work is easily linked to documentation and archiving, but is actually closer to experimentation and photographic conceptualism.

Lempert is a winner of the Edwin Scharff Prize (2005). He has held numerous solo exhibitions at prestigious venues including the Cincinnati Art Museum (USA, 2015), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany, 2013), the Midway Contemporary Art venue in Minneapolis (USA, 2012) and the Contemporary Art Museum in Saint Louis (USA, 2010).

Isabel Tejeda