In the galleries: A digital photo journey through a family’s history
Review by Mark Jenkins for The Washington Post
June 14, 2024
HEMPHILL is pleased to share the latest review of FRANZ JANTZEN by Mark Jenkins for The Washington Post.
As a photographer, Franz Jantzen can depict only visible phenomena. But that doesn’t mean the images in his Hemphill Artworks show are easily recognizable. Some of the pictures’ titles accurately convey their subjects, as in two details of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. But impressionistic techniques — thermal imaging, disorienting perspectives and digital image-stitching — present viewers a scene as only the D.C. artist can see it.
Ongoing: Franz Jantzen at Hemphill Artworks
By Louis Jacobson for Washington City Paper | May 22, 2024
HEMPHILL is pleased to share the review of FRANZ JANTZEN in Washington City Paper by Louis Jacobson.
[Franz Jantzen's] latest exhibition at Hemphill Artworks, Jantzen delves headlong into a new realm: abstraction. He begins with high-resolution digital images of paving stones in Pompeii or ancient architecture in the Sicilian town of Cefalù, then modifies their colors digitally, usually producing sequences of works that offer variations on a theme. Jantzen’s current approach is an extension of previous projects in which he’s taken overlapping images of a subject and then digitally stitched the pieces together. But in his new work, the object he documents is no longer the destination; rather, it’s a starting point for an intensely personal, and often obscure, journey of the mind.
FRANZ JANTZEN | Process Videos
FRANZ JANTZEN is on view at HEMPHILL from May 18 - June 29, 2024.
A professional archivist is tasked with assessing materials of value, preserving them to the best of their ability with the technology available, and maintaining these collections so that the information can have an enduring impact on the communities and institutions that enshrine them. Franz Jantzen understands the responsibility implicitly, both professionally and in his artistic practice.
The exhibition of digital photography in FRANZ JANTZEN employs a systematic documentation process of image making that the artist has honed over decades.
Please enjoy these process-oriented videos of the work in this exhibition.