SABINE VON FALKEN

“When things happen, they happen for a reason.

I purchased a complete Britannica Encyclopedia, dated 1929, some time ago which stood quietly on my bookshelf until I took it down in 2008. I used the encyclopedia as the background for a scientific project that I called “Botanica”. I photographed flowers and juxtaposed them against the encyclopedia entries. Those images were shown in a 2008 exhibition at the Berkshire Community College Gallery.

In 2017, my daughter encouraged me to continue the series which is now entitled Britannica.

Long-lost family heirlooms came to mind as I read and browsed the exceptionally illustrated and treasured Britannica. The idea of photographing heirlooms came to me after I heard about a break-in at my sister's apartment in Berlin. She lost all her family memorabilia to thieves. Every so often when I visited her, we would look at her treasures and make each other aware of whom it belonged to. Sometimes this led to other questions, as we wondered about what times and places these heirlooms might have seen, (figuratively speaking) who was giving them to whom as a gift, and for what reason? Luckily, I took a photograph of the collection and preserved a record of them for our lifetime.

This year, during the world pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, I created “Fire”

from the Britannica series to be included in the Elements exhibition. I turned to the fire page within the Britannica and discovered that the language used to describe this life preserving and affirming element, which we call and know as Fire, was being described with racist untruths. Colonial tales. This is yet another example of how racism and racist tales are systemic and woven into every part of our lives.

I took some time to process this finding and decided to work with fire to burn the photographic print I had made, thereby using fire to describe what fire actually is. Now the burnt print symbolizes the eradication of racism and the importance of truth telling.

Each time I photograph an object it becomes a portrait of its time.” ~Sabine 2020

Sabine's Tango series 

As an artist I see the world through my lens. The camera is my companion. Images in front of me evolve, get transformed and become a documentary of our time. I studied Tango with Jackie Ling Wong who taught a weekly class. She introduced me to the Tango community. I combined my love of photography and my passion for dancing. This Tango series includes images taken in the Berkshires, Buenos Aires, Havana and Salvador.

by © sabine vollmer von falken

by © Sabine Vollmer von Falken