Iris Janke
„für“ / „for“
The depiction of family constellations and biographies in photography is a theme that has occupied me for years.
Since 1996 I have been continuously photographing my family, my friends, selected places and combining these photographs with pictures from the archives of my mother and my grandparents, who are or were photographers. I usually arrange the photographs into thematic clusters according to content, formal and associative aspects, but I also use the different collections as a material basis for disassembling and reorganising them in the form of collages. By linking different levels of time, photographic sequences, snapshots and staged images, open structures are created that reflect differentiated narration(s). The image clusters were previously conceived for wall-filling room installations.
“für” / “for” is my first album (420 x 297 mm, 52 pages), which covers a period of ninety years, starting with my grandfather’s youth photographs (Berlin, 1920s) and ending with my daughter’s children’s pictures (Berlin, 2010s).
Biography
Iris Janke *1975 in Munich
Studied Visual Communication/UdK Berlin, 2000 two semesters abroad in Fine Arts/König.Kunstakademie Stockholm.
2003 Diploma/UdK Berlin. Since then working as a freelance photographer. 2014 Studied Conservation and Restoration of Audiovisual Media/HTW Berlin Digitisation of Werner Herzog’s photographic legacy/Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin. 2011 Winner of the Talents Award of the C/O Berlin Foundation, since then numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad, including C/O Berlin Foundation, Goethe Institute Washington, Les Rencontres d`Arles. Since 2013 project manager in the education programme of the C/O Berlin Foundation. Development of workshop formats and curator of workshop results for exhibitions and publications (2020 Kompass#24 with Harald Hauswald and Karuna Family), publication of her own work in Camera Austria, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Foam Mag, among others. 2020 Scholarship of the Senatsverw.f. Kultur und Europa Berlin, 2021 Scholarship of the Stiftung Kulturwerk der VG Bild-Kunst.