Liebkosungen – Conceptual Fine Art Photography in Platinum Print
Liebkosungen is a series of handmade platinum print photographs by German fine art photographer Jan Schlegel, exploring form, tension, and the ambiguity of touch. The works are created from large format film and printed by hand in the artist’s darkroom.
Detached from their natural context, the forms begin to shift. What appears fragile can become defensive; what suggests softness carries the potential for resistance. The images move between attraction and distance, between the desire for closeness and the instinct to withdraw.
The title Liebkosungen (caresses) introduces a central tension. Without the willingness to risk hurt, touch remains incomplete. The presence of thorns is not only a barrier, but a condition—defining the distance at which closeness becomes possible.
While the human figure is absent, the work remains connected to portraiture—exploring presence through form rather than representation.
Each work is produced as a platinum print, known for its depth, subtle tonal range, and permanence, and released in strictly limited editions.
Available as limited edition single prints in sizes of 56 × 76 cm and 40 × 50 cm, as well as a complete set presented in a handmade portfolio.
Liebkosungen
They stand in silence.
Forms that seem to breathe, to lean, to hesitate.
They recall bodies, gestures, the memory of closeness — yet something remains withheld.
There is a softness in their movement, a suggestion of tenderness, as if they might reach toward one another, or receive a touch.
But they do not.
What appears inviting is guarded.
What seems near remains distant.
Every surface carries the quiet tension
between desire and protection.
The title, Liebkosungen, speaks of caress — of a gentle, intimate gesture, of closeness that asks for trust.
And yet, here, touch is uncertain.
Perhaps even impossible.
These forms do not reject.
They endure.
They wait.
And somewhere within them lies the question:
How close can we come
without being hurt?