Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Ludwig Museum Koblenz, August – October 2018
With texts by Beate Reifenscheid, Klaus Honnef and Corinna Thierolf

2018
German/ English
160 pages, 100 illustrations, 24 x 30 cm
Silvana Editoriale, 2018
ISBN 9788836641307

The crumpled sculptures by American artist John Chamberlain, welded together from deformed car parts, revolutionized the art world in the 1950s. Less well known, but a key element in his overall work, is the way Chamberlain handled photography. In 1977, Chamberlain began to use a Widelux-Camera which had been originally developed for documenting urban and rural landscapes with panoramic images. He experimented with its capabilities by panning the camera across the space and using jerky movements, set to a long exposure time. Chamberlain liked to call these photographs “self-portraits of my nervous system.” Their blurred focus and fleeting nature combine to form a dynamic unit as they absorb that moment of movement in space. Chamberlain described this as bending space, where sculpture and photography have a direct, mutual effect on each other.