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BENJAMIN ANTONY MONN

Architecture, Interior, Portrait
München

Benjamin Antony Monn was born in 1978 in Munich, Germany.

He started working as an assistant to the production management for film and adverts at BMG Management and studying film editing at Roman Kuhn & Partner in Munich before his interest in photography became stronger and stronger and took finally over in 2001. His career took him from film editing to photography – from moving pictures to still images.

Monn worked as an assistant to Mike Detter, Stefan May and several other international photographers before undertaking his apprenticeship at the Art in Action Studio in Munich until 2003. Since then he has been a professional photographer concentrating on the fields of architecture, interiors, reportage and portraits. From the beginning onwards architectural photography stands in the focus of Benjamin Antony Monn’s work. He is not following the established aims of the genre – documentation and identification of buildings – with his innovative way to photograph he rather works on a new definition of architectural photography. Since 2002 this “working progress” let him carry out several groups of work parallel to each other. Within these projects Monn approaches the medium architecture from different perspectives and photographic angles.

For his sequence A-SYMMETRIE he accurately records every single building to work out the pure architectural form. The elaboration of linear structures and abstract form criterions is in the centre of this project. Monn aims at deciphering the formal language of architecture. The design stands for itself – the buildings architecture as whole are presented in a space-time and functionless aesthetics.

Contrasting to this the photographer highlights fragmentary architectural details in his project CANDELA. For each image a certain construction detail of one building is carefully chosen, but photographed from a very a-typical angle of view. These changes are to such an extent that it’s nearly impossible to infer to the elements original position. Monn dissolves the single elements from their typical place and origin within architectural structures. With the reference to the constructive painting the detailed treatment of colour and form receives priority. His images break up with every established idea about buildings and architecture.

Monn’s youngest project within this work field is the ENDOR PROJECT, named after the homonymous planet in Star Wars II. Abstract engineering buildings, like radar-installations, wind farms and ski- jumps, placed in the landscape without any regards build the motives of this sequence. He demonstrates the extreme incision of those functional buildings. The pictures seem created, but they are not. Benjamin A. Monn detects these alarming contrasts between landscape and architecture worldwide.

Benjamin A. Monn describes with his photography a balancing act between fine art and commercial. The artist inside him never stands still. This is visible not only in his architectural photography but also in his other work groups. For his sequence FRAGMENTE he combines fragments of different buildings and creates photographic collages that arouses an entirely new experience of architecture.

His recent commercial works included a large campaign for Nikon, Ploucquet and MepSolar.

Benjamin Antony Monn won a variety of awards and prizes for his photography, i.a. the famous Hasselblad Masters Award in the category architecture. He is currently represented by several international galleries and agents, among others in Shanghai, Los Angeles and New York. He is founder and CEO of the Candela Project Gallery, for contemporary fine art photography and founder of Lookfilter.com. His works were published in several prestigious magazines and special photographic press and his photographs were exhibited in various solo and group shows.