Hans Christian Schink was born in 1961 in Erfurt, Germany. He studied photography at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts in Saxony under Jochin Jansong, and in 1993 he completed his postgraduate at the University of Leipzig. His work navigates the permanent relationship between human technology and nature through focus on aesthetic linear constants throughout the globe.

 

Christian Schink’s revolutionary technique of solarisation, equipped to great effect in his, 1h, series,  creating ethereal apparitions within his work. A solarization is a photographic effect which distorts the film through extreme overexposure to light, triggering a reversal of the chemical processes on the negative. This excess light becomes inverted and is rendered in the final image as black. This technique was first documented by theoretician and photographer, Minor White, in their, Black Sun (1955), where White happened upon the effect when his camera shutter froze.

 

Schink thereafter has used this technique to document the movement of the Sun through the sky over the course of a one hour exposure. Schink’s masterful ability to create photographs with the stunningly interesting compositional aspect of the Sun’s abstracted movement through such technique alludes to the early photography work of Muybridge, as well as the ballistic reports produced by the physicists Ernst Mach and Peter Salcher, documenting the camera’s ability to capture movement in a way unlike the eye. 1h, reflects on the utopian character of analogue photography established from its inception, its definitive reality through chemical reactions to light exposure, however manipulating such affect to create alien intrusions.

 

Hans Christian Schink has won countless grants and awards allowing him to continue his, 1h, series documenting the globe in regards to the movement of the Sun. Christian Schink photographs the previously undocumented, showing landscapes unknown to many, this means that although meticulously planned, a location cannot be truly confirmed unless scouted by Schink himself – making the photographs exceptionally rare given that they need to be taken either close to dusk or dawn. This othering of landscapes is further emphasised by the presence of the alien abstracted Sun.

 

Hans Christian Schink has exhibited at Kunstmuseum Heidenheim (Heidenheim, DE); ACE Gallery (LA, US); Galerie Rothamel (Erfurt, DE); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Salta, AR). His work is currently in the collections of ADAC Collection (Munich, CH); DZ Bank (DE); Bundeskunstsammlung – Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany (DE); LACMA (LA, US); MoMA (Tokyo, JP); The Getty Centre (LA, US); amongst others which can be found on his website or which can be emailed to you upon request.