Adam Jeppesen is an artist and a traveller. He is best known for his images of remote and rugged landscapes where he celebrates the physical imperfections his long and arduous journeys left on his negatives. Jeppesen's work elevates the imperfect and celebrates the honesty that comes with allowing the imperfection to take centre-stage within his finished pieces. The fragility of photographic materials, the passage of time and the materiality of the photograph as an object are continuing themes that reappear in Jeppesen's oeuvre.
The techniques and printing processes Jeppesen uses are deeply rooted in historic photographic tradition, yet he continues to push the limit and redefine the medium within his practice. The photogravure was first developed in the 1820s, whereby a photographic image is etched into a copper plate that is then inked and pressed onto paper. This process enables multiple copies of the same, perfectly reproduced image. Using the photogravure process in his Ghost series, Jeppesen questions the value of the perfect and the function of the multiple in photographic art, and instead chooses to press his image without re-inking the plate until the image disappears on the paper.
In his work using the cyanotype process, The Pond series is inspired by the decomposition process of the marshy ponds found in the artist's native Denmark. For the artist, a pond represents a process in nature that is completely unaffected by humankind: an unruly, wild environment that will not be controlled. Likewise, Jeppesen's chosen medium of cyanotype echoes this theme. The works are created by hand, exposed in sunlight and hand-washed in water - rustic, raw, elemental and ultimately subject to the forces of nature.
In the series Tanks Jeppesen transfers the cyanotype technique to the three-dimensional. Further pushing the limitations of what is considered a photograph, Jeppesen suspends cyanotype-printed silk in clear mineral oil inside a glass tank. This delicate material is stretched and anchored by strings to create a floating, intricate, three-dimensional object. These works are alluring and melancholy in their solitude, harkening back to Jeppesen's earlier work with landscape photography. Tanks demonstrates the beginning of Jeppesen's departure from a strictly photographic practice, and his move into three-dimensional and sculptural works.