The work of the German photographer Felix Schöppner explores the mechanisms and limits of human perception, as well as the use of technology to develop it further.
Human beings have five senses to perceive what is happening around them. Although these senses evolve over time and can be trained and perfected, the use of technical devices has shown that there are a series of phenomena that the human body is unable to perceive on its own. Vision and computing tools have been indispensable in scientific fields such as astronomy, in which the observation and analysis of planets, satellites and asteroids in space would have been impossible for the human eye. Despite the fact that these tools allow us to see beyond the visible field by bringing the distant closer or enlarging the tiny, often photographic representation is not the ideal medium, and graphic forms or scale models take their place.
Cognition comes from an interest in exploring how to photograph the unphotographable. Schöppner uses everyday objects to create a series of study images that represent fundamental theories or phenomena in astronomy such as the Big Bang, gravity or black holes.
Felix Schöppner was born in 1990 in Bensheim and raised in southern Hesse, Germany. In 2010 he started studying Communication Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, focusing on Photography. After graduating in 2021 with a mixed media project about nature and human perception, which is still ongoing, he continued his studies in the master’s programm of Visual Communication at the Bauhaus University Weimar. He has assisted photographers such as Olaf Blecker, Michael Schnabel, Daniel Stier, Kira Bunse, Anders Hallberg, Markus Jans or Kai Uwe Gundlach, among others. He was recently part of the exhibition “Bauhaus und die Fotografie – Zum neuen Sehen in der Gegenwartskunst” for the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus, which took place in Düsseldorf, Berlin and Darmstadt. He was also a member of the first Masterclass for RAY2018 in Frankfurt, led by Arno Rafael Minkkinen. In 2019 he joined the Deutscher Werkbund as a full member and in 2021 he was selected as Feature Shoot Emerging Talent. His images are the result of a working process in which he combines various techniques and materials for his installations. For him, photography is part of an integral process in which questions of human perception are addressed.
Promoted by the Begihandi collective, GETXOPHOTO is a festival dedicated to image that takes place in Getxo (Basque Country) for the last 15 years. It brings different proposals from photographers and visual storytellers from all over the world to the city, setting a contemporary conversation about the theme proposed each year.
GETXOPHOTO inhabits the public space and continues supporting the use of formats, stands and unconventional exhibition spaces to show the different images. This is a thematic festival that every three years works together with a different curator who understands the photography as a tool of knowledge, communication, and of course artistic enjoyment. Exhibitions, installations, projections, collaborations, experimental laboratories and many activities complete the program of the Festival.
Jon Uriarte is the curator of GETXOPHOTO 2022.
Copyright © Felix Schöppner and Getxophoto, all rights reserved
