Biography

In the analog multi-media installation This Sense of Wonder.  the viewer walks around analog slide projectors, light boxes, light desks, self-designed luminaries, slide viewing kits, and last but not least photographic prints. The work has been awarded with the Merck-Prize 2018 of the Darmstadt Days of Photography. The installation gives the viewers an understanding of their own transiency and leads them into the wonders of deaths and its remains.

The jury’s statement for awarding the Merck Prize:
As a photographer, Brigitte Lustenberger works with the precision of a scientist, the aesthetic sensibility of a Baroque painter, and the poetic voice of a lyricist. Her installation operates at the intersection of photography, projection, and installation. Both the fleeting nature of a drawing made of light and the preserving quality of photography are central elements of her work. Through multimedia approaches, spatial experimentation, and sculptural thinking, she pushes the boundaries of photography and convinced the jury.

The insects are fixed to old slide glasses. The slides are shown as projections, as photographic prints and as sculptures on light desks. The bright light of old slide projectors and the light desks transform the insects’ semitransparent body parts into fragile but powerful projections. They are ephemeral like the electronic light that fuels the projectors: As soon as the power supply is cut off, the images fade into darkness without leaving a trace.

I am fascinated by transience, the passing of time, and decay. Instead of fear and disgust I witness a lost, enraptured world of withered and faded things: A beautifully wilted flower, the tenderness of an insect’s wing, a hint of daylight on a forgotten world.