GENIUS LOCI

In the beginning of 2012, photographer Thomas Kellner received a surprising E-Mail from Yekaterinburg in the Russian Urals, to form a project with exhibition and book for the city's anniversary in 2013, because Yekaterinburg was founded almost 300 years ago, by Georg Wilhem Henning, a Siegen Citizen. This was barely known and Thomas Kellner started his research and is now finalizing genius loci.During the years of study Thomas Kellner began to work with pinhole cameras in the subject of art which built the basis for his approach he is following to the present day. In his early works experimenting with material, photographic methods and contents was crucial. It included building pinhole cameras himself in order to adopt them to the purpose he was aiming at. The results reflect a diversity of styles and subjects. They range from multiple perspectives within one photograph over documentary to photograms. In this period he always printed full editions so that today there is a large number of a vintage print for later exhibitions. At the end of the nineties then Thomas focused on the analogue camera and 35 mm film. He developed a visual language and method that deconstructs and constructs objects at the same time. Now, since already 15 years, he is working in a worldwide unique style of contactsheets, photographing the object in numerous singular shots until in the end the object is visible in its entirety again. The film-material Thomas is using is transparent for the recipient as well because the single shots are assembled together as negatives. Therefore perforation, codification and numbers of the film-material are part of the positive.