“Bordelle & Zellen”
By Jürgen Chill
With the photography series “bordelle & zellen” (“bordellos & cells”), the photographic artist Jürgen Chill penetrates milieus which are not accessible to everyone, but radiate a concealed fascination. Personal, intimate locations which not many know…
Jürgen Chill © All rights reserved.
The award-winning photography series “zellen” won the 1 st prize of the European Architectural Photography Prize in 2007. Prison cells of various penal institutions in Germany will be shown in centrally-perspective views. The series encompasses nine large-formation colour photographs.
In his photographic works Jürgen Chill proceeds in a sober-minded, precise and deserted manner in the search of traces of life and activity in these private realms.
The unusual perspective depiction and the high resolution of the large-format photographs provide an astonishingly authentic view of the concealed realities of these worlds.
High detail precision, spatial associations as well as the function of rooms are the focus and form the image in his graphic reproduction. The spatial situations as well as the suggestive events in the rooms will be scrutinised by means of a shooting technique which goes beyond the optical laws of perception. The artist finds unseen images ― details which remain concealed in our everyday perception and which allow us to newly perceive the existing.
Jürgen Chill © All rights reserved.
A person’s favourite place is a place which can be chosen at will. The person’s freedom is presupposed. Freedom, however, is not granted to all. Those that do not have it must adjust to whatever opportunities exist and strive to create their own place.
A cell is perhaps the smallest possible space for habitation that a person can have.
Personal and functional items are all accommodated in the tightest space.
The spaces are represented as they are found. The proportions of the photographs mach those of the rooms. All details in the rooms are shown orthogonally from above, nothing has been altered.
About Jürgen Chill
Jürgen Chill © All rights reserved.
The Essen-born photographic artist Jürgen Chill earned a degree in “Fine Arts” at the Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten (University of Arts) in Arnhem (The Netherlands) in 2002. Since then he has been represented in various national and international exhibitions. His works were nominated for various art prizes, and in 2007 he won the European Architectural Photography Prize with the photography series “zellen”.
“Personal details from the life of prisoners, but everything without the individuals to which they belong. A dehumanised world which narrates the world of humans. They are suffocating photographs, despite the bird’s eye perspective. A hovering above things and at the same time the feeling of being entrapped.”
