Jochen Lempert – SOUSEDÉ
Sousedé—the Czech word for neighbours—gives title to Jochen Lempert’s exhibition at Fotograf Gallery. Rather than placing humans at the centre, Lempert invites us to perceive our living environment as a habitat shared by humans and other living beings, a shared ecology of presences, where encounters often remain fleeting, unnoticed, or hidden in plain sight.
Drawing on his background in biology, Lempert approaches photography as a form of attentive observation. His analogue black-and-white photographs trace subtle correspondences between animals, plants, people, and the environments they inhabit. Presented as unframed prints and open-ended sequences, the images unfold less as individual works than as a delicate constellation of relations.
SOUSEDÉ is also an invitation to reflect on the act of seeing itself. Lempert’s photographs suggest that looking is never a one-sided act, but a reciprocal encounter shaped by different forms of attention and presence. Through a photographic language that is at once precise and poetic, Lempert makes visible the negotiations of coexistence that shape everyday life, opening a space for an interspecies subjectivity.
BIO
Jochen Lempert lives and works in Hamburg. He studied biology at Friedrich Wilhelms University in Bonn, specialising in dragonfly ecology and reproduction. Before devoting himself fully to photography in the late 1980s, he co-founded the experimental film collective Schmelzdahin, which explored the material and chemical possibilities of celluloid film. Since then, he has developed a distinctive photographic practice that has gained international recognition, including the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation Grant for Contemporary Photography, the Ars Viva Photography Prize, and the Camera Austria Award.
Info
Artist | Jochen Lempert
Curator | Anna Voswinckel
Opening | 3 October 2026, 6:00 PM
Duration | 4 October – 5 November 2026
Venue | Fotograf Zone Gallery
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