Marc Erwin Babej (born 30 March 1970) is a German–American photographic artist and writer. His elaborately staged works focus on subject matter in history and social science.

Life and career

Babej was raised in

Bad Homburg Bad Homburg vor der Höhe () is the district town of the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse, on the southern slope of the Taunus mountains. Bad Homburg is part of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main Regional Authority, Frankfurt Rhein-Main urban area. The town's offic ...

, West Germany and graduated from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

(A.B., History, 1992) and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (MSc, 1993). He worked as a reporter Forbes Magazine, while also writing criticism for the arts sections of

Corriere della Sera The ''Corriere della Sera'' (; en, "Evening Courier") is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average daily circulation of 410,242 copies in December 2015. First published on 5 March 1876, ''Corriere della Sera'' is one of It ...

Die Zeit ''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles. History The ...

Die Weltwoche ''Die Weltwoche'' (German for "The World Week") is a Swiss weekly magazine based in Zürich. Founded in 1933, it has been privately owned by Roger Köppel since 2006. The magazine's regular columnists include the former president of the Social D ...

and The Guardian.

Works

Babej's photography-based series focus on conflicting belief systems in history, politics and science. ''Mask of Perfection'' (2013) examined the tensions between natural beauty and the "scientific" approach to beauty practiced in plastic surgery. His subsequent works have examined the after-effects of historical events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union in ''Chernogirls'' and the Roman heritage of Tunisia in ''Africanae''. ''Mischlinge'' (2014) focuses on the impact of the Nazi era on definitions of national identity in the Federal Republic of Germany, combining images with genealogical DNA tests of the cast members and writings by himself, historian

Thomas Kühne Thomas Kühne (born 13 March 1958, in Cologne) is a German historian. He holds the Strassler Chair for the Study of Holocaust History and is the Director of the 'Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies' at Clark University, Massachusett ...

and

Cem Özdemir Cem Özdemir (, ; born 21 December 1965) is a German politician who currently serves as Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture since 2021. He is a member of the Alliance 90/The Greens party. Between 2008 and 2018, Özdemir co-chaired the Gr ...

, co-chairman of

Alliance '90/The Greens Alliance 90/The Greens (german: Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, ), often simply referred to as the Greens ( ), is a Green politics, green List of political parties in Germany, political party in Germany. It was formed in 1993 as the merger of The Greens ...

. ''Unser Afrika'' (2015) focuses on supremacy and colonial genocide during, and in the aftermath of, the Herero and Namaqua genocide in the former colony of

German Southwest Africa German South West Africa (german: Deutsch-Südwestafrika) was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, though Germany did not officially recognise its loss of this territory until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. With a total area of ...

. Historians and genocide scholars

Henning Melber Henning Melber (born August 22, 1950 in Stuttgart ) is a German political science, political scientist and sociology, sociologist. He is a Germany, German-Namibia, Namibian and Sweden, Swedish African studies , Africanist and political activist ...

, Jürgen Zimmerer, Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller served as historical advisors on the work. The June 2018 premiere of Unser Afrika in Hamburg City Hall was widely regarded as having drawn attention to an overlooked aspect of German history.

Style

Babej works exclusively in

black and white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

. His photographic style is influenced by the deep focus cinematography of 1930s and 40s filmmakers such as Orson Welles and

Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...

, and cinematographer Gregg Toland. ''Mischlinge'' explicitly references the aesthetics of Leni Riefenstahl.

Yesterday – Tomorrow

Babej's latest work, ''Yesterday – Tomorrow: A Work in Aspective Realism'', takes up the complex visual language of ancient Egyptian art. An international team of more than 50 specialists was involved in the work. Thirteen Egyptologists worked with Babej as co-creators of the "photographic reliefs" which form the core of the work: Christian Bayer and Oliver Gauert (

Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim The Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim is an archaeological museum in Hildesheim, Germany. Mostly dedicated to ancient Egyptian and ancient Peruvian art, the museum also includes the second largest collection of Chinese porcelain in Europe ...

), Laurel Bestock (

), Peter Der Manuelian ( Harvard University), Roxana Flammini ( Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina/ CONICET),

Salima Ikram Salima Ikram ( ur, سلیمہ اکرام; born 17 May 1965) is a Pakistani professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, a participant in many Egyptian archaeological projects, the author of several books on Egyptian archaeology, a ...

and Mariam Ayad (

American University in Cairo The American University in Cairo (AUC; ar, الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة, Al-Jāmi‘a al-’Amrīkiyya bi-l-Qāhira) is a private research university in Cairo, Egypt. The university offers American-style learning programs ...

Christian Loeben Christian E. Loeben (* 22 December 1961) is a German Egyptologist. Loeben studied Egyptology and art history at the Free University of Berlin from 1980 to 1985. Subsequently he was employed as an academic tour guide. From 1992 until 2003 he wa ...

( Museum August Kestner), Juan Carlos Moreno García ( Université Paris IV-Sorbonne), Matthias Müller (( University of Basel) Thomas Schneider ( University of British Columbia), Regine Schulz (

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

) and Steve Vinson ( Indiana University Bloomington). The preface of the ''Yesterday – Tomorrow'' book is written by his mentor, Roger Ballen.

Aspective Realism

In ''Yesterday – Tomorrow,'' Babej adapts defining characteristics of ancient Egyptian art, such as aspective representation (the simultaneous representation of the human body from multiple perspectives in two-dimensional media), the canon of proportions and the integration of images, symbols and text. The resulting new art style, termed ''Aspective Realism'', is regarded as "the revival of ancient Egyptian art after 2,000 years of dormancy." At the opening of the ''Yesterday – Tomorrow'' exhibition at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Head of the Museums Sector at Egypt's Ministry of State of Antiquities, Elham Salah, stated that Aspective Realism "revives the complex visual language of ancient Egyptian art and evolves it in contemporary photorealistic media."

Selected exhibitions

* 2018: ''Yesterday – Tomorrow'', Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt * 2018: ''Unser Afrika'', Hamburg City Hall, Germany * 2018: ''Yesterday – Tomorrow'', Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt * 2017: ''Yesterday – Tomorrow'',

, Germany * 2016: ''Mischlinge'', Paris Photo, Paris * 2016: ''Mischlinge'', Museum Wewelsburg, Germany * 2015: ''Mischlinge'', Historical Technical Museum, Peenemünde * 2015: ''Mask of Perfection'', Paris Photo, Paris * 2015: ''Mischlinge", Galerie m2a, Dresden, Germany'' * 2015: ''Chernogirls'', AB Gallery,

Lucerne Lucerne ( , ; High Alemannic German, High Alemannic: ''Lozärn'') or Luzern ()Other languages: gsw, Lozärn, label=Lucerne German; it, Lucerna ; rm, Lucerna . is a city in central Switzerland, in the Languages of Switzerland, German-speaking po ...

, Switzerland * 2014: ''Mask of Perfection'', Paris Photo, Paris * 2014: ''Mask of Perfection'', Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum, Clarinda, Iowa * 2014: ''Körpereingriffe/Mask of Perfection'', Lebensspuren Museum, Wels, Austria''Körpereingriffe/Mask of Perfection''exhibition
.

References

External links

Marc Erwin Babej official site

Yesterday – Tomorrow book

Essay, photographs and video at Spiegel Online , 11 November 2014
Video
on

ZDF ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...

German TV, 21 November 2014 {{DEFAULTSORT:Babej, Marc Erwin 1970 births Living people Photographers from Frankfurt American photographers Brown University alumni Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni Choate Rosemary Hall alumni People from Bad Homburg vor der Höhe Artists from New York City Emigrants from West Germany to the United States