Tag: collage

Peter Tillessen, 40 Jahre Kernspaltung (40 years of Nuclear Fission), (2012)

Press release: “40 Years of Nuclear Fission looks like an old scientific textbook that explains the origins of nuclear fission, illustrated by captivating black and white photographs of sculptural shapes. In fact the book is not an academic but personal compilation by photographer Peter Tillessen. The 40 photographs show excrements of the black-headed earthworm, which aggressively ploughs through a cemetery in Zurich. The pictures of those fragile sculptures are contrasted with parts from the detailed descriptions of nuclear fission from the original book, a text by Darwin that explains the work of earthworms and a text by the artist, who describes his childhood in the atomic age as a son of an atomic engineer. The number 40 is in this compilation no accident: Tillessen took the pictures on his –rainy– fortieth birthday for one of his best friends to pay off his debts from a bet – as he wasn’t a father of a big family (like his father) at the age of 40. That’s what he had pretended to his friend at the age of 27. The design of the book in the book accentuates the biographical fission within the big context of the atomic age: particularly the way the photographer examines the father’s book to reflect his own situation and to become aware of the earth’s fragility”