2nd place
silver star award
HEIKO HELLWIG HELLWIG
germany 
title
"Silicon Cities"
All this seems to be seen in the photographs of Heiko Hellwig. As if taken from satelites that are looking from above into the chaos of megacities, into the barren land of industry sites or the maze of modern suburbs. A futuristic scensrio of glooming light and neon lit trails in dawn.
The assumed City views hellwig composes out of innards from disused computers or game consoles. During month hellwig collected the materiel, a true tresure of fascinating motherboards, prozessors and microchips. In his Studio he photographed the intricate technical architectures more or less levitating under the top. With precise lighting throgh customized studio floodlights, a camera delivering high resolution files, Hellwig shows the normally flat micoelectronic with stunning plasticity. Together with very rich detail and a
disturbing impenetrability. Processors do not reveal their accomodated and transported informations at ease, they rather conceal them within their digital architecture.
After this everything was visualized on high resolution screens and with high-end workstation computers composed. Multiple photographs where layered and stiched together, yellow and purple combined neon shadings where added until the pictures reached their labyrintic sparkle and this ambivalent light and shadow. Thus the series catches the intricacy and the opaque character of digital machinery. Coexisting they appear like futuristic urbanities from science fiction movies pictured out of a dark sky.
The promising and night sparkling Silicon Cities represent at least a bifocal perspective:
At first they indicate to the bright and utopic high-technology world prospected by computer companies. On the other hand they also manifest something abyssal. In this way they unveil the core of our digitized society, wich is driven by informations we can´t encompass anymore together with sources and pathways we cant reconstruct at all.
Born in 1960 in Wuppertal, Germany, a town where the trains are litterally driving upside down above the river Wupper. This was just initial for learning to see things from another point of view. In1966 my family moves to Stuttgart, my hometown since then, where my father got a job as a managing engineer to build big machines. Two years later father got an invitation to build even bigger machines for six month in Detroit. So i got another point of view on this world. And to share my very new point of view i demanded my rst kamera to show this to everybody. Since then I am a photographer I guess. Back to Germany I went to secondary school and tried to convince my teachers in math and physics with my kreativ solutions of their questions. This was very demanding for them and their humor, really. Finishd with my degree the rst thing i did after school was earning money and buying a professional camera with some lenses. From then on I worked as a photographer, not very professional at the beginning, but after some aprenticeships at the best german Photographers i new a lot more, about lm , lighting, ceativity and yes about myself too. From 1990 on I worked as selfemplyed photographer for international companys and magazines in Germany and all over Europe such as Bosch, BMW, Metabo, Festo, Lufthansa, Penthouse and Focus Magazine.
For over 10 years now my ne art pictures are also sold in Galleries all over the world.
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entry description
Iridescent street views, neon light housing silhouettes, dizzying skyscraper canyons.All this seems to be seen in the photographs of Heiko Hellwig. As if taken from satelites that are looking from above into the chaos of megacities, into the barren land of industry sites or the maze of modern suburbs. A futuristic scensrio of glooming light and neon lit trails in dawn.
The assumed City views hellwig composes out of innards from disused computers or game consoles. During month hellwig collected the materiel, a true tresure of fascinating motherboards, prozessors and microchips. In his Studio he photographed the intricate technical architectures more or less levitating under the top. With precise lighting throgh customized studio floodlights, a camera delivering high resolution files, Hellwig shows the normally flat micoelectronic with stunning plasticity. Together with very rich detail and a
disturbing impenetrability. Processors do not reveal their accomodated and transported informations at ease, they rather conceal them within their digital architecture.
After this everything was visualized on high resolution screens and with high-end workstation computers composed. Multiple photographs where layered and stiched together, yellow and purple combined neon shadings where added until the pictures reached their labyrintic sparkle and this ambivalent light and shadow. Thus the series catches the intricacy and the opaque character of digital machinery. Coexisting they appear like futuristic urbanities from science fiction movies pictured out of a dark sky.
The promising and night sparkling Silicon Cities represent at least a bifocal perspective:
At first they indicate to the bright and utopic high-technology world prospected by computer companies. On the other hand they also manifest something abyssal. In this way they unveil the core of our digitized society, wich is driven by informations we can´t encompass anymore together with sources and pathways we cant reconstruct at all.
about the photographer
CurriculumVitae Heiko HellwigBorn in 1960 in Wuppertal, Germany, a town where the trains are litterally driving upside down above the river Wupper. This was just initial for learning to see things from another point of view. In1966 my family moves to Stuttgart, my hometown since then, where my father got a job as a managing engineer to build big machines. Two years later father got an invitation to build even bigger machines for six month in Detroit. So i got another point of view on this world. And to share my very new point of view i demanded my rst kamera to show this to everybody. Since then I am a photographer I guess. Back to Germany I went to secondary school and tried to convince my teachers in math and physics with my kreativ solutions of their questions. This was very demanding for them and their humor, really. Finishd with my degree the rst thing i did after school was earning money and buying a professional camera with some lenses. From then on I worked as a photographer, not very professional at the beginning, but after some aprenticeships at the best german Photographers i new a lot more, about lm , lighting, ceativity and yes about myself too. From 1990 on I worked as selfemplyed photographer for international companys and magazines in Germany and all over Europe such as Bosch, BMW, Metabo, Festo, Lufthansa, Penthouse and Focus Magazine.
For over 10 years now my ne art pictures are also sold in Galleries all over the world.
back to gallery
