Platinum Prints

Born in 1964, Knigge grew up in Jena, East Germany, the City of Carl-Zeiss-Lenses. After study engeneering he moved to Berlin and started in photography in the early 90ies with portraits of jazzmusicians. From 1995, his contracts in architecture-photography took more and more influence in his own artwork. At the same time he had begun to learn the platinum printing with his teacher, the german masterprinter Wolfgang Moersch. From that time, Knigge got an obsession at this process and didn’t use other materials in his own projects. The photography of Knigge was shown in solo-exhibitions at the Carl-Zeiss-Foundation in Jena, Germany, the Kunstallianz-Project Berlin, Germany, the Josef-Sudek-Atelier Praque, Czechian and several groupshows in Germany and UK. His work resides in the permanent collection of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts; Kunstallianz Berlin and different privat collections. Jens Knigge currently prefers in his photography a 5x7 inch banquet camera from Linhof and a Linhof Technorama 617. When he prints his 5x7 pictures from the original negatives, so he enlarges the panoramas til a printsize from 12 2/3 x 40 inch. All enlarged negatives were made by himself on the traditional photochemical way. The prints are handcoated with the platinum and palladium salts and processed by himself too. Knigge lives and works in Berlin.