John Kimmich-Javier gestures and speaks with great excitement and energy. The comparison between his dynamic personality and the silent architectural spaces inspired the title for his From the Silence to the Light: Photographs of Swedish Architecture and Sculpture series. The silence refers to the calm architectural rooms that exclude all tourists, and the light symbolizes John’s exuberance, the awakening of Sweden’s remarkable architectural history, and the significance of light to Baroque art and modern photography.
Baroque art is characterized by classical Greek forms, deep space that is heightened by linear architectural elements, and decadent surface decorations. Baroque artists expanded chiaroscuro, an Italian word for “light and dark” that refers to realistic shading (modeling) techniques that were created to heighten the three dimensional rendering of forms and objects. This technique was first fully mastered by Leonardo da Vince and later expanded by the Baroque masters - Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Gentileschi. Conceptually, light and dark creates drama and mood and symbolizes good and evil, fundamental elements of the shared dualist philosophies of the Classical Greeks and Christians.
Art enthusiasts who appreciate the aesthetic and provocative nature of black and white photography are really expressing interest in the visual lure of chiaroscuro - the masterful manipulation of light and dark tones (zones in photograph). Ansel Adams and his contemporaries developed the zone system, a scientific technique for manipulating photographic chemistry, films and papers to control the light and dark photographic values in order to enhance their artistic vision. Kimmich-Javier is a master craftsman and visionary artist who utilizes the zone system to ingeniously photograph Baroque architecture and sculpture.
Kimmich-Javier is an associate professor at Iowa University’s school of journalism, has traveled internationally for over two decades. Assignments have taken him to Sweden to photograph palace interiors for his series From the Silence to the Light: Photographs of Swedish Architecture and Sculpture; to Cairo, Egypt to record an ancient ceramist community; and to Spain to document architecture and cultural events. He has exhibited in prestigious galleries and museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery Kontrast and Bildhurst Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden; Harenberg Center in Dortmund, Germany; El Visor Centre Fotografic, Valnecia, Spain; and in numerous universities and museums across the United States and abroad. He has received a number of international awards and grants (including several first place awards for the National Press Photographers Association Picture of the Year Competition), and curated the prestigious exhibition “Contemporary Documentary Photography in Spain,” which opened in the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, before touring the United States.