Lukas Birk
Born in 1982, lives and works in Provence
Lukas Birk is a visual artist, researcher and publisher. His work has been exhibited on 4 continents and has taken many different shapes. His multi-disciplinary projects have been turned into films, chronicles and books. A large part of Lukas’ work deals with archival material he collects while traveling or while delving into his own background. These archives are not ambiguous nor are they found images or objects. Lukas researches his materials through investigations and explorations very often in areas that have been affected by conflict and have not yet had the chance to present existing material in an artistic form. His narratives tackle recorded history by creating alternate storylines and fictional elements, alongside commonly accepted facts. Lukas founded artist exhibitions programs in China with the Austro Sino Arts Program, an artists in residency program in Indonesia (SewonArtSpace), co-founded the Afghan Box Camera Project and the Myanmar Photo Archive, an endeavour to re-interpret and tell the story of Myanmar through collected photographs taken over the last 6 decades. The collection now holds 20.000 images. Fraglich Publishing, his own book imprint publishes projects by Lukas and selected work mainly focused around photographic history. His most recent endeavour Instant Box Camera puts his long term research, artistic practice and community work into a small manufacture of late 20th century cameras.