Alex Kempkens (born Alexander Kempkens, 24September 1942) is a German photographer, photojournalist and computer artist. He also writes articles and curates exhibitions. Kempkens is an autodidact.
Life
Early life
Born in Linz am Rhein, Germany, Kempkens grew up during the Second World War in Scheuren. From 1947 he lived in Gerresheim and received his first camera in 1951. At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a high voltage electrician at the Mannesmann tube rolling mills in Düsseldorf. In addition to his work as a high voltage electrician, he took photos with a Voigtländer camera, which he had received from his mother. He completed a course for photo lab work at the community college and bought some simple laboratory equipment. From 1962, his photographs were shown at the Photokina for the German Youth Photo Prize.
Kempkens attended night school, but left before graduating in October 1966, to start a two-year internship as a photojournalist with Jürgen Retzlaff at the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten. In the second year of voluntary service, he worked at the Neuss city desk. From 1965 onwards Kempkens traveled regularly to Prague where he mixed with Czech climber friends he had met in 1964 in the Tatra Mountains. On1 May 1967 he was back in Prague and photographed the 1 May Parade as a reporter. Instead of photos of tanks and marching soldiers his photos showed young soldiers as Blues players as they walked with their girlfriends together in the parade. It was spring in Prague and the young soldiers showed that to them the Prague Spring already lived. A photo was published in the Düsseldorf Nachrichten after his return.
In August 1968, he traveled with Jochen M. Raffelberg, who was also a volunteer with the Düsseldorf Nachrichten, to Biafra. Their report about the Biafra war received national attention. Five of the photographs were published on 2September 1968 as a double page spread in Der Spiegel magazine under the title "A nation is dying".
Munich
In November 1968, Kempkens moved to Munich, where on 1December he became a photojournalist at the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA). In January 1970, he joined the newly established newspaper Tz in Munich. From the autumn of 1971, he worked as a freelance photojournalist in Munich. In the summer of 1972 Kempkens was an assistant at advertising photographer Jan Keetman and subsequently also worked as a commercial photographer.
In 1973, he added architectural photography to his portfolio and from spring of 1975, Endoscopy photography for Architectural models. His endoscopy photos from the model of the new planned building for the German Parliament in Bonn, 1975, by the architectural firm Behnisch & Partner were published in 1976 the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The art critic of the newspaper, Doris Schmidt wrote a one-sided discussion of the planned new building of the Bundestag in Bonn. In the caption to the endoscope photos, she noted: This is the first time that a newspaper has published endoscopic images of an architecture model. Other publications of the endoscope photos followed. In particular, his endoscope photos of the planning to redesign the Königsplatz, Munich led to articles about his work in PM Magazine.
He also photographed with endoscopes for advertising and free experiments. In January 1980, he had a solo exhibition of his endoscopy photos in Munich. There then followed a series of publications in German magazines, such as in the ZEITmagazin. In the magazine for professional photographers ProfiFoto Jürgen G. Gumprich wrote: And it's probably Alex Kempkens who deserves credit for having made this commonly medically attributed endoscopy technology into a socially acceptable practice in this country. Gumbricht is referring to pictures published in almost all former German photography magazines such as Color Photo, Foto Revue and Nikon News for amateur and professional photographers.
Analog to digital
In 1982, Kempkens produced a photograph for PM Magazine, Munich, with an endoscope showing a computer monitor in which an image of Albert Einstein was mounted. The final image of Einstein was created with Image processing software. The assembly of the two images was used as the cover image for the PM "Computer '82 issue". After publication he contacted the editorial staff and received the information that led to the purchase of his first computer in December 1982. The computer was a PDP11 / 24 + made by DEC.