Product Details

Johannes Lindenmeyer, born 1954 in Konstanz (Germany), was a student at AC 1971-1973. He became a professor of clinical psychology and worked in the treatment of people with alcohol problems for more than 40 years since.

At UWC Atlantic, Johannes started with photography learning the development and printing of black and white analogue films. While studying psychology he worked as a press photographer of an underground newspaper. For many years he documented the gentrification of the old town of Heidelberg and the campaigns of the anti-nuclear movement in Germany. Some of his pictures became symbols of resistance and the fighting for civil rights covering books, posters and political magazines on these matters. His work was shown in an extensive exhibition at the Heidelberger Kunstverein in 1981.

In 1982 Johannes started to photograph scarecrows all over the world as a dying out form of landart. Scarecrows are not only to keep away birds, they are always put up in rather lonesome, remote areas, where they pose as the absent owner of the field in the old days. They bring us back to traditional and more ecological agriculture directly run by farmer families. Scarecrows demonstrate a personal way to till a field by manual work without big machines and chemical fertilization. Very often they wear the personal clothes of farmers that were of no use any more. They also show the wit and irony as well as the artfulness of farmers, accentuating personal characteristics like a cartoon. The magic of scarecrows depends on distance: Only from afar do they seem to walk or even dance and trigger our imagination of being alive like a ghost or mythical creature. Once you get close to them, you realize that they are just a handmade pupal. Johannes developed a special technique to underline this, almost lying on the ground before the scarecrow using wide-angle lenses.

There have been several exhibitions in rural art galleries on this work in different places in Germany.

Prints are high-quality
Size: 24×30 cm
Frame not included.