Born in Switzerland in 1972 but living and working in Quebec, Canada for many years, I’m a multidisciplinary artist working with new media, audio and photography. Interested about the way our memory affect our perception of time and territory, I’m currently working on man-altered landscapes and the impact of post-industrialization on territory.
My artistic statement has always been about themes related to my immigrant status: being attached to a territory left behind, the difficulty of being part of a new territory… All of this is probably familiar stuff to any expatriate, and those realities are so strong, I can’t avoid them. My fascination over the territory’s impact on human beings brought me to turn the question over: as individuals and society, how’s our print over landscapes? Not only on our near environment but also over landscapes miles away from our home. In a global world, our human print is much stronger than it was a century ago. Our lifestyles impact many other lives; our ways of living modify our own landscape but a great part of the planet as well. This interdependency brings a cycle, a loop. What weight on our lives those man-altered landscapes have? And how both our individual and collective memories affect the way we perceive the landscape? Everyone got inside him its own past, memories, references. It is this memory, as much personal as collective that I’m trying to reach. The artistic work then becomes a collection of references for everyone to find its own way through.
My fascination about territories brought me to further study many photographers and movements with the same concerns. I’m a huge fan of Edward Burtynsky’s work and Raymond Depardon is one of my all-time favorites. I’m also very interested by New Topographics and the Düsseldorf School of Photography, especially the Bechers’ work.
All this time spent thinking about my artistic statement’s place inside photography’s language brought a desire to get back to my roots. I started working with photography as a teenager, and bought my first SLR myself when I was 14. At this time, I was working with film of course and buying an old Nikon FE a few months ago was a true revelation: it seems the pleasure of photography was back again, as well as the true reasons to use photography as a means of artistic expression. Analog photography is all about slowness, research, looking for the right angle and the right moment. You spend your time looking at things, spaces and light instead of looking at a computer’s screen doing post-production and selection work. As it is often the case, technical restrictions bring artistic freedom and inspiration.
Links:
Website: http://mlehmann.ca
Behance Network: http://www.behance.net/meriol_lehmann
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/meriol_lehmann
500 px: http://500px.com/meriol_lehmann/
Wonderful art work and even when I’m not an expatriate I feel a deep connection with your relationship with the territory and landscapes. I’ve approached the city in a similar way because I consider than in post modern cities all of us are alone surrounded by strangers not matter if we share the same language, nationality or customs. Wonderful to see your work my friend.