Jens Liebchen

1970                     born in Bonn
1992-1995            Studies of Social Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin,
since 1995            freelance work as photographer

Since 1995 Jens Liebchen has created a number of projects. Most well known is his work DL07 Stereotypes of war – a photographic investigation. The book which is mentioned in Martin Parrs / Gerry Badgers Photobook Vol. II has been published by Edition J.J.Heckenhauer in 2000.
Ian Jeffrey writes in the introduction: “Think of DL07 as a kind of Arte Povera. Liebchen went to Tirana with no thought of significant reportage, for the city was relatively speaking at peace. But he found in passing on its streets available evidence which allowed him to reflect in depth on the post-modern conspectus, on a large part of our contemporary predicament caught as we are between the here-and-now and all those mysterious termini and sources to which we defer.”

Furthermore Jens Liebchen is well known for his body of work Politics & Art – Art & Politics where he photographed artists like Georg Baselitz, Christian Boltanski, Jenny Holzer, Siegmar Polke, Günther Uecker and many others, who had been invited to create artworks for the Berlin Reichstag Building. Politics & Art – Art & Politics has been published as a specially designed book in 2004. The work became part of the international art programme of the Goethe Institute and has been exhibited so far in Athens, Bangkok, Beijing, Brussels, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico-City and Sydney.

Playing Fields, Liebchens latest project has been published in magazine format in 2005, designed by Winfried Heininger. Playing Fields is focusing on the quite infrastructure and peripheral spaces of the new Great Game – spaces which are very close to the mythical netscapes of a new contesting order concerning resources in Caucasus and Central Asia. The publication includes an essay by Gerry Badger.

 “Tsukuba–Narita 2011/03/13”, Liebchen's recent work, is a direct reaction on the incidents in Japan in March 2011. The book has been published by Spector Books, Leipzig 2011.

Jens Liebchen lives in Berlin and Tokyo. He is a member of lux-fotografen. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, Esquire and Qvest.