Matthias Koch – To Photograph Is to Refuse Resignation
Matthias Koch was born in 1964 in southern Germany. He lived in Venezuela, Chile, and Mexico — years of exile that shaped a gaze attuned to the margins, to unstable territories. In Ardèche, France, he eventually found a place to anchor himself — a rugged, storied landscape that now grounds his work.
Koch doesn’t photograph to explain, but to inhabit the world, to listen to its silences, to resist erasure. His vision, both lucid and poetic, turns toward what is shifting, fragile, on the verge of vanishing.
Each image begins with an act of attention: an adolescent face caught in metamorphosis, a landscape steeped in memory, a fleeting light. He observes thresholds, transitions, the in-between spaces of time and place.
His series — Metamorphosis, Todtnauberg, Figures of a World at Risk — trace sensitive cartographies of a changing world. Beneath their formal diversity lies a shared urgency: to speak of the ephemeral, the human, the vulnerable.
Inspired by philosophy and by the territories he walks, Koch explores the tension between the familiar and the strange. The German word Unheimlichkeit — an unsettling strangeness — captures the spirit of his work.
For him, photography is a way to remain present. A quiet act of resistance. An invitation to see, to feel, to remember.
Matthias Koch est né en 1964 dans le sud de l’Allemagne. Il a vécu au Venezuela, au Chili, au Mexique — des années d’exil qui ont façonné un regard sensible aux marges et aux territoires instables. C’est en Ardèche qu’il a trouvé un ancrage, un paysage rude et habité qui accompagne aujourd’hui son œuvre.
Koch ne photographie pas pour expliquer, mais pour habiter le monde, en capter les silences et résister à l’effacement. Son regard, lucide et poétique, se tourne vers ce qui vacille, ce qui pourrait disparaître sans bruit.
Chaque image naît d’un geste d’attention : un visage en métamorphose, un paysage chargé de mémoire, une lumière prête à s’éteindre. Il observe les seuils, les passages, les interstices entre les âges et les mondes.
Ses séries — Metamorphosis, Todtnauberg, Figures d’un Monde en Sursis — dessinent des cartographies sensibles d’un monde en mutation. Au-delà de leur diversité formelle, elles partagent une même urgence : dire l’éphémère, l’humain, le fragile.
Inspiré par la philosophie et les territoires qu’il arpente, Koch explore les zones de glissement entre le familier et l’étrange. Le mot allemand Unheimlichkeit, cette inquiétante étrangeté, résume bien l’esprit de son travail.
Photographier, pour lui, c’est offrir une forme de présence. Une façon d’habiter le monde sans prétention, en laissant place à la résonance. Une invitation à voir, à sentir, à se souvenir.
Matthias Koch, born in 1964 in Germany
You can find Fine Art Giclée prints, open and limited editions in our shop. Selected photos and stories are available for licensing on visura.
Contact: matthias.koch@pm.me
Book. Figures d'un monde en sursis (fr)
Figures d'un monde en sursis (Figures of a world on borrowed time) sets out to link Matthias Koch's photographs with Claude Molzino's philosophical analysis of them. This "time of the present" as perceived by the photographer's eye is in fact a set of snapshots of the "time of the end" that could be our era. In addition to the nuclearization of the world and the risk it represents for humankind, the over-exploitation of the planet poses an unprecedented threat to the living world.
After reflecting on the specificities of photographic art, the value of "black and white" and photography's relationship with time and reality, Claude Molzino draws primarily on the theses of Roland Barthes, Martin Heidegger and Günther Anders to demonstrate the usefulness of photographic art. Under the philosopher's pen, the latter is aptly seen as a revelation to man of his reprieve, in other words, as a means of alerting him to his responsibility for his own disappearance. At the risk of devastation and annihilation, beyond the historical episode of Hiroshima presented as the prelude to this new "era of humanicide", never, according to Claude Molzino, has "being [been so much] under the threat of non-being".
“Matthias Koch’s photographs have a great strength, an intensity of monstration that cannot leave indifferent to our time and to the world, they cause uneasiness and a diffuse anguish from which one cannot escape because it is indeed reality that is at stake, stripped of all fiction."
Claude Molzino, Philosopher
Exhibitions
Print Publications2024 logbook #12019 Unheimlichkeit (Editions du Tanargue), épuisé(L’Harmattan) Claude MolzinoOnline Publications2018 Eschaton, Edge of Humanity2017 Cimarron oder die rettende Flucht, Kwerfeldein2017 Abschied von zu Hause, Kwerfeldein2017 The Hard Decision Of Moving A Family Member To An Alzheimer’s Care Home, Edge of Humanity2017 Nothing stays like it is, Edge of Humanity2016 Eschatologie, Kwerfeldein2016 Metamorphosis oder alles wird gut, Kwerfeldein2016 Paris, Retrospektive 2015, Kwerfeldein2015 Mexikanischer Traum, Kwerfeldein2015 Mexikanischer Traum, Kwerfeldein2015 Transit, Kwerfeldein