Alex Kempkens (born Alexander Kempkens, 24September 1942) is a German photographer, photojournalist and computer artist. He also writes articles and curates exhibitions. Kempkens is an autodidact.
Life
Early life Born in Linz am Rhein, Germany, Kempkens grew up during the Second World War in Scheuren. From 1947 he lived in Gerresheim and received his first camera in 1951. At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a high voltage electrician at the Mannesmann tube rolling mills in Düsseldorf. In addition to his work as a high voltage electrician, he took photos with a Voigtländer camera, which he had received from his mother. He completed a course for photo lab work at the community college and bought some simple laboratory equipment. From 1962, his photographs were shown at the Photokina for the German Youth Photo Prize.Hanns Hubmann: Bildjournalismus, Zwei Aktuelle. In: foto magazin, September 1970, S. 16.
Kempkens attended night school, but left before graduating in October 1966, to start a two-year internship as a photojournalist with Jürgen Retzlaff at the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten. In the second year of voluntary service, he worked at the Neuss city desk. From 1965 onwards Kempkens traveled regularly to Prague where he mixed with Czech climber friends he had met in 1964 in the Tatra Mountains. On1 May 1967 he was back in Prague and photographed the 1 May Parade as a reporter. Instead of photos of tanks and marching soldiers his photos showed young soldiers as Blues players as they walked with their girlfriends together in the parade. It was spring in Prague and the young soldiers showed that to them the Prague Spring already lived. A photo was published in the Düsseldorf Nachrichten after his return.Dusseldorfer Nachrichten, Nr. 102 vom 4. Mai 1967, S. 3.
In August 1968, he traveled with Jochen M. Raffelberg, who was also a volunteer with the Düsseldorf Nachrichten, to Biafra. Their report about the Biafra war received national attention.Alex Kempkens (Fotos), Jochen M. Raffelberg (Text): Überall diese Bilder des Grauens., In: Dusseldorfer Nachrichten Nr. 196, 197 und 200 vom 23., 24. und 28. August 1968. Five of the photographs were published on 2September 1968 as a double page spread in Der Spiegel magazine under the title "A nation is dying".Catalog World Press Exhibition 1968/1969, S. 58 und 60.
Munich In November 1968, Kempkens moved to Munich, where on 1December he became a photojournalist at the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). In January 1970, he joined the newly established newspaper Tz in Munich.Catalog zur World Press Exhibition 1971–1972, S. 177–180, and 199. From the autumn of 1971, he worked as a freelance photojournalist in Munich. In the summer of 1972 Kempkens was an assistant at advertising photographer Jan Keetman and subsequently also worked as a commercial photographer.
In 1973, he added architectural photography to his portfolio and from spring of 1975, Endoscopy photography for Architectural models.Alex Kempkens: Makro-fotografische Einblicke. Professional CamerA, JV-Journal-Verlag, München 1980. His endoscopy photos from the model of the new planned building for the German Parliament in Bonn, 1975, by the architectural firm Behnisch & Partner were published in 1976 the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The art critic of the newspaper, Doris Schmidt wrote a one-sided discussion of the planned new building of the Bundestag in Bonn.Doris Schmidt: Warten auf den Start. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Nr. 294 vom 18./19. Dezember 1976, S. 66. In the caption to the endoscope photos, she noted: This is the first time that a newspaper has published endoscopic images of an architecture model. Other publications of the endoscope photos followed. In particular, his endoscope photos of the planning to redesign the Königsplatz, Munich led to articles about his work in PM Magazine.Modellfotografie: Mit dem Endoskop ins Reich der Miniwelt. In: P.M. Magazin, Nr. 11 (1978), S. 11.
He also photographed with endoscopes for advertising and free experiments.Hermann Pfeiffer: 29. Stuttgarter Kalenderschau Graphik, Verlag Karl Thiemig, B 20341 E, März 1979, S. 1 und 22. In January 1980, he had a solo exhibition of his endoscopy photos in Munich. There then followed a series of publications in German magazines, such as in the ZEITmagazin.Eva Kirschenhofer: Ansichten aus der Ameisenperspektive. In: Zeitmagazin, Nr. 23 vom 30 May 1980, S. 38–39. In the magazine for professional photographers ProfiFoto Jürgen G. Gumprich wrote: And it's probably Alex Kempkens who deserves credit for having made this commonly medically attributed endoscopy technology into a socially acceptable practice in this country.Jürgen G. Gumprich: Alex Kempkens, Endographie. In: ProfiFoto, Nr. 4 (1981), S. 36–41. Gumbricht is referring to pictures published in almost all former German photography magazines such as Color Photo, Foto Revue and Nikon News for amateur and professional photographers.
Analog to digital In 1982, Kempkens produced a photograph for PM Magazine, Munich, with an endoscope showing a computer monitor in which an image of Albert Einstein was mounted. The final image of Einstein was created with Image processing software. The assembly of the two images was used as the cover image for the PM "Computer '82 issue".Maxim Pouska: Computer – Werbung Grafik-Design und Kunst 1935–2010, BOD, 2011, S. 119–120. . . After publication he contacted the editorial staff and received the information that led to the purchase of his first computer in December 1982. The computer was a PDP11 / 24 + made by DEC.
As early as the autumn of 1982 he experimented with the image processing software then in May 1983 images of his experiments were published for the first time in the magazine Photo Revue.Jean Paul Laub, Programmkunst – Kunstprogramm? In: Photo Revue. Professional CamerA, Mai 1983, S. 138–145. His first digital images were used by DEC as the invitation card for the 1983 Systems fair in Munich.Systems'83 konnte Rekordzuwächse verbuchen. In: Computerwoche. In January 1984, the German magazine Chip published the digital images of the invitation card in the article From the Image to process. The author wrote, It takes an artist's eye to discover in addition to the practical also the aesthetic benefit of this technique Image Processing. [...] The result are color images in a mixture of reality and the irrational as it may be indicative of a whole era. The author of the article foresaw that in the next few years digital images, which until then were almost exclusively used in various industrial, medical and scientific fields, would be used in the computer art and graphics fields.Vom Bild zum Prozess. In: CHIP (Computerzeitschrift), 01/1983, S. 45.
The first solo exhibition of his experiments was entitled "Digital color photos" in January 1984 at the Art Light gallery in Munich. The exhibition was the reason that in the first issue of 1984 the magazine Form printed a four-page report on Kempkens and his digital art and publicity photos. The introduction to the article read, It's the classic side of computer graphics: they are typical computer images, these examples – or the fun of the artist with the computer.Filewrite! >>Pixles-Spiele<< – mit digitaler Fotografie. In: Form (Zeitschrift), Ausgabe 105 (1984), S. 42–45. 2D computer graphics The word "fun" used by the editor "refers to the then predominantly present fear of computers – in the profession of design, too.Susanne Päch: Computer-Portraits von Alex Kempkens. In: Novum, September 1985, S. 46–51. Klaus von Gaffron visited the solo exhibition and spoke to Kempkens and advised him to apply to become a member for the Professional Association of Visual Artists Munich and Upper Bavaria (BBK).BBK Kempkens followed the advice and was accepted. In December 1985 his digital photo portraits appeared at the group exhibition Photography Portrait in the Gallery of the Artist of the BBK.Jutta Tezmen-Siegel, Alex Kempkens: Fotografie – Porträt, BBK – Berufsverband Bildender Künstler München u. Oberbayern, München 1985, .Fotografie – Porträt, Galerie der Künstler, München, 1985. , P 33,
In early 1985 Kempkens proposed to the Exhibition Committee of the BBK that a group exhibition of computer art be held at the Gallery of Artists in Munich. His concept was accepted in the fall of 1985 and the exhibition Bilder Images Digital took place in October 1986 in the Gallery of the Artist.Helga Biesel: Berufsverband Bildender Künstler entdeckt Computer als Handwerkszeug. Ausstellung: Digital belebte Kunstwelt. In: Computerwoche, 14. November 1986. He organized, curated the exhibition and showed his own works.Copper Giloth, Lynn Pocock-Willians: A Selected Chronology of Computer Arts: Exhibitions, Publications, and Technology. In: Art Journal, Nr. 3 (1990), , S. 292. At the exhibition, he produced the catalog "Bilder Images Digital, computer artist in Germany '86".Alex Kempkens, Barbara Kempkens (Hrsg): Bilder Images Digital: „Computerkünstler in Deutschland 1986“, Barke Verlag, 1986, Seiten 255, , ; (). The slogan on the exhibition poster was The focus of the exhibition is the statement of the picture. Kempkens also explicitly emphasized this in the preface to the catalog when he wrote, We exhibit pictures. It was planned by him as a clear distinction between computer images and computer graphic thereby anticipating the coming dominance of digital imagery.
Parallel to the exhibition, he organized a symposium and a workshop in the gallery of the artist. To the symposium he had the first computer art pioneers among other Frieder Nake and Georg Nees invited. The moderator of the conference was Richard Kriesche. The critic of the Munich evening newspaper, Peter M. Bode, wrote about the symposium: The computer artists thus argue that the sparks fly [...] something like the passionate discussions that there must have been when photography first appeared.
The pioneer of this art, Georg Nees, wrote in a letter to the newspaper "Bilder Digital",Georg Nees: Die Situation der Computerkunst in der BRD. In: BilderDigital, Nr. 1 (1988), S. 27. , . I may with the greatest satisfaction to say that I have never experienced in the short history of computer art so haunting event, such as the Munich Symposium. For the exhibition Nees created a game world in a new series of architectural drawings.Georg Nees: Künstliche Kunst und Künstliche Intelligenz. In: Alexander Kempkens und Barbara Kempkens (Hrsg.): Bilder Images Digital: „Computerkünstler in Deutschland 1986“, Barke Verlag 1986, , Seiten 58–67 und 112–119. Nees wrote in his letter also that he liked very much the talks with the young generation of computer artists at the symposium.
At the workshop and for the first time in Germany, an art exhibition showed six Amiga 1000s with a connected video station and color printer for young and old visitors to experiment with. Visitors could paint images in 4096 colors and print them in color. About the video station analog images been converted to digital images. The visitors used then this data to create new digital images with the Amiga 1000. The results could also be printed in color and put at the wall of the workshop.Alex Kempkens: Bilder Images Digital. In: BilderDigital – Zeitung für Art und Advertising mit dem Computer, Nr. 1 (1988), S. 17, .