Nationality American, German Website www.marcerwinbabej.com | Name Marc Babej | |
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Born 1970 (age 44–45) Frankfurt, Germany Occupation Photographic artist and writer | ||
Marc Erwin Babej (born March 30, 1970) is a German-American photographer and writer. His elaborately staged works focus on subject matter in history and social science.
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Life and career
Babej was raised in Bad Homburg, Germany and graduated from Brown University (A.B., History, 1992) and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (M.Sc., 1993). He worked as a reporter Forbes Magazine, while also writing criticism for the arts sections of Corriere della Sera, Die Zeit, Die Weltwoche and The Guardian.
Works
Babej's photography-baed series focus on conflicting belief systems in history, politics and science. Mask of Perfection (2013) examined the tensions between natural beauty and the "scientific" approach to beauty practiced in plastic surgery.
His subsequent works have examined the after-effects of historical events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union in Chernogirls and the Roman heritage of Tunisia in Africanae. Mischlinge (2015) focuses on the impact of the Nazi era on definitions of national identity in the Federal Republic of Germany, combining images with genealogical DNA tests of the cast members and writings by himself, historian Thomas Kühne and Cem Özdemir, co-chairman of Alliance '90/The Greens.
Style
Babej works exclusively in black and white. His photographic style is influenced by the deep focus cinematography of 1930s and 40s filmmakers such as Orson Welles and Jean Renoir, and cinematographer Gregg Toland. Mischlinge explicitly references the aesthetics of Leni Riefenstahl.
Yesterday - Tomorrow
Babej's latest work, Yesterday - Tomorrow: A Work in Aspective Realism, takes up the complex visual language of ancient Egyptian art and evolves it in photorealistic media. An international team of more than 50 specialists was involved in the work. Thirteen Egyptologists worked with Babej as co-creators of the "photographic reliefs" which form the core of the work: Christian Bayer and Oliver Gauert (Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim), Laurel Bestock (Brown University), Peter Der Manuelian (Harvard University), Roxana Flammini (Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina/CONICET), Salima Ikram and Mariam Ayad (American University in Cairo), Christian Loeben (Museum August Kestner), Juan Carlos Moreno García (Université Paris IV-Sorbonne), Matthias Müller ((University of Basel) Thomas Schneider (University of British Columbia), Regine Schulz (Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich) and Steve Vinson (Indiana University Bloomington). The preface of the Yesterday - Tomorrow book is written by his mentor, Roger Ballen.
Aspective Realism
In Yesterday - Tomorrow, adapts defining characteristics of ancient Egyptian art, such as aspective representation (the simultaneous representation of the human body from multiple perspectives in two-dimensional media), the canon of proportions and the integration of images, symbols and text. The resulting new art style is termed Aspective Realism by Babej, is regarded by the Egyptologists involved as "the revival of ancient Egyptian art after 2,000 years of dormancy."