Famous+Photographer

JUSTIN BIEBER IS THE BEST! [|wedding photographer in Albany NY] **Lightmark Photography**

Lightmark Photography consists of two individuals; the painter/photographer Cenci Goepel and filmmaker/photographer Jens Warnecke. The two combine landscape photography with the modern photographic technique known as light painting, or light writing. The technique makes use of a long exposure shot and clever placement and movement of an assortment of lights in a dark background. Lightmark combines excellent landscape photography with a brilliant use of the light-painting technique. I could attempt to explain their work further, but as always, a picture is worth a thousand words.



Cenci Goepel was born in 1972 in Lübeck, Germany. In 1998, while attending "Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Communication Design" she became affiliated with Jens Warnecke, a photographer and filmmaker and the two of them began a solidified friendship. They took the first few steps of the eventual creation of Lightmark photography whilst travelling through Norway in the middle of winter a few years later. Cenci recalls:

“We were sitting in our VW van drinking mulled wine, playing around with candles, lighters and long exposure times. Suddenly we had the urge to go out into the cold, into this still and sparse mountain landscape. A strange atmosphere! No light, just the full moon; no sound, just snow crunching underfoot. We started making simple shapes in the air with flashlights and a lighter on the bank of a frozen lake while taking photos with long exposure times. Since we had consumed considerable amounts of mulled wine, the results were not particularly sophisticated. But behind the scribbles of light, the lake and mountain landscape appeared bathed in lush blue moonlight."

After her graduation in 2000, Goepel became employed as a painter and photographer in Germany, Norway and Korea. She spent a number of years working in such a manner, but in 2006 she felt the need to revisit that night in Norway years before. She (and Jens) then began the professional collaboration and "light-painting" project known today as Lightmark

Jens Warnecke was born in 1969 in Hamburg, Germany. He studied philosophy and contemporary literature at the University of Hamburg during the 90's while still pursuing his passion for art in the forms of filmmaking and photography. In 1997, he started to work as a filmmaker and photographer. He has been working on the Lightmark project with painter and photographer Cenci Goepel since their professional partnership began in 2006.



When asked about their influences the two photographers reply with a raw simplicity, stating that their inspiration comes from nature. The couple, originally landscape photographers and pure outdoorsmen, make all of their work is an attempt to enunciate the environment they work with. The art produced by Lightmark is the pure result of the influence of the natural landscape as presented to the two photographers.



While their work has been described by some as artistic, landscape, experimental, even abstract photography, I believe Lightmark's style is an obscure mix of all mentioned genres, and a little bit of something else. While it could be simply referred to as light-painting photography, Lightmark's methods are slightly deviant than the bulk of light painting projects, and seem to lean heavily on all of the mentioned photographic genres. Also known as Light-writing, Light painting practices before Lightmark have lacked the professional tone and quality presented by Cenci and Jens. The clear and beautiful work developed by the German couple projects Lightmark into a new realm all-together in the Light-writing genre.