JAN
WENZEL
Photographs
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Jan-Oliver Wenzel is born in 1967 and receives his first camera, a vintage Voigtlaender Vito B, at the age of 7.When he is 17 he pickes up black and white photography directing his lens towards water, stones and trees, subjects that he still works on. A visit at the Carnival in Venice in 1987 makes him work in his first major colour body of work.After high school he studies economics at Kiel (Germany), Paris (France) and Regensburg (Germany). During his time in Paris he is fascinated by the modern architecture of La Defense and the relationship of the buildings towards human nature. He leaves university in 1996 with a PhD in economics.
In 1998 a voyage to California makes him aware of the home and work of artists
Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. From then on his creative photographic output grows year by year. He trains himself about the techniques of photography and the Zone system by studying the books of Ansel Adams. During the following years he travels and mountaineers in Nepal, Namibia, Switzerland and the United States always accompanied by a Nikon SLR or a Rolleiflex medium format camera.
Today he lives with his wife and two sons in Munich, Germany.