Instagram @philippine.schaefer
Philippine Schaefer
GERMANY
Philippine Schaefer, plastician photographer, born in Germany Westphalia, she has lived and worked in Paris since 1991. Graduated from the ENSBA School of Fine Arts, Paris in 1997, she studied with Christian Boltanski and Marina Abramovic. Gradually in her artistic journey, sculpture gave way to performance. The body becomes her field of exploration and photography stands out as a witness. Since 1999 she has been making her enlarger prints with Diamantino Quintas Labophoto, then in her own laboratory she deepened the photogram technique. The imprint of the body is multiplied, inverted and fixed on the photosensitive paper, the materiality of the body, of the bodies, is combined with the photographic technique. Her photograms were recently exhibited in Seoul, Korea (French Photography Today), in Berlin, New York, Brussels, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Cadaqués (Spain) and in France in Paris, Bordeaux and regularly at the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles (2021, 2023 and 2024).
• SERIES •
Light imprints
During her walks, Philippine gathered herbs, flowers, and leaves. Then, in the darkroom, these plant fragments merge with her body and endlessly recombine into a light-based script, leaving their luminous imprints. Here, photography opens up a space between experimentation and wonder. The images are born in the darkroom, with each print being a unique creation.
By revisiting the art of the photogram, Philippine Schaefer contributes to an unprecedented moment in the history of photography.
Photography becomes a material, a site of experimentation, a tangible and unrepeatable space where the body and nature no longer obey the gaze, but the entire spectrum of the sensory. Light, the emulsion-coated surface, and the contact process form an almost shamanic combination in which the artist performs the image.
