Felix Schoeppner is a German Photographer, born in the 90’s and raised in south Hesse. In 2010 he started studying Communication Design at University of Applied Science Darmstadt with focus on photography. He graduated in 2021 with a mixed media project about nature and human perception, which is still ongoing. During his studies he assisted numerous national and international photographers where he learned a lot of technical things as well as all the other skills of a photographer. In his early career was working in the field of documentary and architecture photography. Meanwhile the focus of his work has shifted to the still life. His images represent the result of a work process in which he combines various techniques and materials into installations. His work impresses with a high degree of stringency and perfection, both in terms of content and implementation. For him, photography is part of a comprehensive process in dealing with questions of human perception.
Contact:hello@felixschoeppner.de+49 (0)176 636 809 02Instagram, Facebook
Personal
Drive-by (WIP)
Drive-by is an exploration of the visual recording — of a linear perception of time in the form of one single image. The images in the Drive-by series address the aspect of the fragment as the result of a compressed snapshot. Taken with a mobile phone from a moving car, they show passing cars and street scenes that seem strangely deformed and reminiscent of collages. In fact, they describe the attempt to concentrate the moment of passing in an image.
The realisation was done with the help of the panorama function in the smartphone. With the help of this technique it is possible to shoot a panorama easily with the smartphone by turning it around a static camera position. The shots for Drive-by were taken from a moving point of view, as a result of which the individual shots could not be adequately put together to form a coherent overall picture. The result shows that only fragmentary picture elements could be assembled. Empty spaces are created, some of which have to be filled with inappropriate content.
The term drive-by has its origin in American organised crime at the beginning of the 20th century. It describes the moment when a victim is shot at from a moving car or from the passenger seat of a motorbike. The most famous acts are probably the murders of the two musicians Tupac Shakur (2Pac) and Christopher Wallace (The Notorious B.I.G.) in the 1990s. Due to the sudden occurrence and the short reaction time, the killers often remain undiscovered and the memories of eyewitnesses fragmentary.
In German legal terminology, there is a category of witnesses called bang witnesses. They perceive a chronological event only from the moment of a bang, for example a gunshot. Only this impulse makes them witness an event. Nevertheless, the witnesses often claim to have followed the entire event. Thus, one has to assume that the memories before the impulse clearly deviate from what actually happened and the composition of several witness statements provide a fragmentary picture.
In contrast to the film, the photographs from Drive-by leaves the viewer room for interpretation. The moment is not recorded in chronological order, so it does not allow the viewer to recapitulate what they have seen. Rather, one begins to assemble the individual snippets into a location in order to draw conclusions about what happened or could have happened there.
about flying and what it means to do so (WIP)
The studies, which are summarised under the working title about flying and what it means to do so, arise from the ongoing work on a shape depends on its nature and purpose. While working on the nesting box, I automatically became interested in the history of flying. Flying is the natural way for a bird to move and at the same time one of the greatest dreams of mankind.
Probably the oldest tale about flying comes from Greek mythology and is the story of Daedalus and Icarus, who flee from the island of Crete with the help of wings they built themselves. Leonardo da Vinci was considered a great role model for many of the aviation pioneers of the 19th century, as he had already laid the groundwork for many technological developments a long time before. With the first flight of the Wright Brothers, the development of aviation began and has since become an important part of worldwide passenger and freight transport.
Nowadays, flying has become simple and common practice. But even the supposedly simple things usually have a very complex system running in the background. I follow these systems, starting with the simple basics of flying, in the form of studies -on individual terms in order to visualise them in an abstract way.
a body depends on its nature and purpose (WIP)
The form of an object is usually caused by its function, use and/or its content. This statement is not new, as it already appeared in the second half of the 19th century in essays by the American sculptor Horatio Greenough and the American architect Louis Sullivan. However, their interpretation of the phrase form follows function was by far not as radical as that of the representatives of the still emerging Bauhaus. However, the phrase is associated with the institution and the revolution in architecture and product design, as it reflects its teachings in a few concise words.
When I visited the Helsinki Biennale 2021 on Vallisaari Island, I noticed the many nesting boxes. The island was last home to a military base that was abandoned in 2008 and now serves as a recreation area and exhibition space. For this reason, I asked myself why there are still nesting boxes on an -abandoned island.
The nesting box as I found it there was a rectangle made of wood with a hole as access for the bird. It therefore bears no relation to its natural counterpart, the bird's nest, which could not be more different in form and manner of origin. This is due to the fact that the nesting box is supposed to be simple and cheap to produce, whereas the bird's nest is always a unique piece that also differs widely in terms of bird species.
It was obvious to me to extend this analysis to our living culture. What form of living is on the rise, what does individual living space look like and what regional differences are to be found that also need to be conserved to some extent?
As a starting point, I compare the nesting box with industrial housing, which was a major concern in the period after the World War II. There was a great shortage of living space and people were looking for a way to create functional living spaces quickly and cost-effectively with the help of reduced planning based on systems.
I was interested in the question of what architectural elements could be found in industrial housing in addition to living space. In the first step, I started to add balcony, roof, staircase to a nesting box in the model and to look at how this influences and changes its external perception.
The aim of the work is to look at architectural and living culture and how it absorbs and reflects temporal and geographical contexts. Which regional construction methods are making a comeback in order to cool buildings passively? What phases does a building project in Switzerland go through? And why does a house have to look like a symbiosis of cuboid and pyramid?
Growth – Space
Growth – Landscape as an object
Cognition
In what way does human sensory perception take place in a high-tech world for connections outside of what is apparently possible?
Perception is first of all the recognition of an object or state in our immediate environment with the help of our 5 senses. With the help of technical devices, we can exceed the limits that are set biologically for us and expand them many times. The perception of such, invisible subjects and states therefore often first takes place in an abstract way with values that are assigned to certain parameters and can be visualized based on this. The clear way of representing values is in a graphic, drawing or a scaled model. Since size relationships play a decisive role here, in some cases you are forced to not display the relationships of objects proportionally to one another in order to be able to ensure that they are clearly recognizable. The series “Cognition” deals with this topic by using terms from the fields of physics and astronomy and presenting them in simplified models, build with daily objects and studio equipment.
Sketchbook
Artificial Landscapes
Alexander von Humboldt defined landscape as the "total character of an earth region". The landscape is created in the mind of the observer and is - objectively seen - only a collection of different objects, organic as well as anorganic, natural as well as artificial. Under the title "Artificial Landscapes", places are documented and interpreted that simulate, optimise, and compress the characteristics of certain conditions found in nature. Artificially created nature is modified for its optimal use and the conditions can be kept constantly the same. This opens up the possibility of exporting regionally occurring characteristics of a landscape to distant regions in order to use them independently of the regional natural conditions. The reasons for creating a replicated landscape span topics from science and research, education, production, consumption and sport.
Figures
Memories are usually very personal recapses of earlier, sometimes long-gone days of a person. In the series "Figures" I compile pictures to personal memories from my early childhood to the present day. As a starting point for the image serve memories that I have in connection with a specific item. To move beyond the reproduction of memory or profane representations of objects, I place the objects in a new, different context. They are detached from their actual purpose as commodities and are thus seen as independent sculptures.
Comissioned
The Wall Street Journal — The Future of Everything
Capital Magazin—Profit Alert
Scissor/Paper/Rock
Capital Magazin—Watch Award 2023
Ekn Sourcing Programm
Editorial for DFL-Magazine about prevention of injuries for football players
Editorial for "Impulse"-Magazine by Volkswagenstiftung
Max Schubert – watchmaker
seltsame tage darmstadt & arno schmidt stiftung
Faradai, the electric spirit
Journal
