Alex Kempkens
At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a high voltage electrician at the Mannesmann tube rolling mills in Düsseldorf.
[1] Kempkens attended night school, but left before graduating in October 1966, to start a two-year internship as a photojournalist with Jürgen Retzlaff at the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten.
From 1965 onwards Kempkens traveled regularly to Prague where he mixed with Czech climber friends he had met in 1964 in the Tatra Mountains.
[3] Five of the photographs were published on 2 September 1968 as a double page spread in Der Spiegel magazine under the title "A nation is dying".
[6] His endoscopy photos from the model of the new planned building for the German Parliament in Bonn, 1975, by the architectural firm Behnisch & Partner were published in 1976 the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The art critic of the newspaper, Doris Schmidt wrote a one-sided discussion of the planned new building of the Bundestag in Bonn.
In particular, his endoscope photos of the planning to redesign the Königsplatz, Munich led to articles about his work in PM Magazine.
[10] In the magazine for professional photographers ProfiFoto Jürgen G. Gumprich wrote: And it's probably Alex Kempkens who deserves credit for having made this commonly medically attributed endoscopy technology into a socially acceptable practice in this country.
[11] Gumbricht is referring to pictures published in almost all former German photography magazines such as Color Photo, Foto Revue and Nikon News for amateur and professional photographers.
In 1982, Kempkens produced a photograph for PM Magazine, Munich, with an endoscope showing a computer monitor in which an image of Albert Einstein was mounted.
The author wrote, It takes an artist's eye to discover in addition to the practical also the aesthetic benefit of this technique Image Processing.
[15] The first solo exhibition of his experiments was entitled "Digital color photos" in January 1984 at the Art Light gallery in Munich.
The exhibition was the reason that in the first issue of 1984 the magazine Form printed a four-page report on Kempkens and his digital art and publicity photos.
[17] Klaus von Gaffron visited the solo exhibition and spoke to Kempkens and advised him to apply to become a member for the Professional Association of Visual Artists Munich and Upper Bavaria (BBK).
The critic of the Munich evening newspaper, Peter M. Bode, wrote about the symposium: The computer artists thus argue that the sparks fly [...] something like the passionate discussions that there must have been when photography first appeared.
[24] At the workshop and for the first time in Germany, an art exhibition showed six Amiga 1000s with a connected video station and color printer for young and old visitors to experiment with.
The scrap was packed in a metal barrel and as Computer Burger placed in the entrance hall of the Gallery of the Artist.
[27][28] Starting in 1987, following other exhibitions of his works, Ferdinand Ullrich commissioned Kempens to develop and produce the computer game Zeche Recklinghausen II.
Fischer knew the architectural photos by Kempkens from Munich and therefore urged him to make nice pictures from Old Montreal (Vieux-Montréal).
Phyllis Lambert, founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, herself lived in the area and had one of the first documentaries created.
In this year of the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its founding, it is admirable that a newly arrived citizens can help us recall the old plans of Ville-Marie, skechet by the solid base of its buildings.
May we hear these singing stones .... Brunet-Weinmann compares the photos to the etching of Paris, Charles Meryon at the time of Baudelaire drew.
Fahr wrote to the images of Kempkens: These fairies and water virgins, usually in the foreground, not wearing a swimsuit, but they play with each other when they are in pairs.
Arenz published, under his chosen title "Satori in Montreal" in the 2004 edition the poems in English and French with the pictures by Kempkens.
