About
Flyn Vibert is a photographer and artist based in Berlin. Their work explores the concept of ‘organic photography’. A practice which involves transforming the surface of portrait images through a variety of unconventional and self-taught processes. These are neither digital nor darkroom in their origin, but are uniquely created.
These works focus on the idea of (re)using everyday household items and objects, and putting them together in ways not normally applied in an arts context. Inspired by Jerzy Grotowski’s notion of a Poor Theatre, Flyn pursues a practice in photography of using the smallest amount of fixed elements to obtain maximum results by means of the ‘magical transformation’ of objects.
These vary from more direct interventions such as sculpting images in ice and controlled fire experiments, to working with ordinary materials such as hair gel, nail polish, slime, toothpaste, soap, and other ‘secret formulas’. One reason they refer to themself as a scientist as well as a photographer and artist.
Moreover, their work deals with questions of grief, sustainability, LGBTQ+ issues, and the gender experience.
Flyn is concerned with pushing the boundaries of the photographic medium through experimentation. Looking not towards digital practice or conceptual methodology, but to evolving the role of the photographer as an artist and an inventor.
‘The unknown is what fascinates in the visual world of Flyn Vibert.’ - Walter Keller, in Du Magazine
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Flyn studied their First Class BA (hons) in Photographic and Digital Media at the Cambridge School of Art, completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Photographic Studies at Central Saint Martins, and holds a Masters with Distinction in Photography from the London College of Fashion.
They have published work online and in print with Hunger, Du Magazine, WeTransfer, Safelight, Platea, and Kaltblut amongst others, and their work has been exhibited in the UK, France, the US, and in Germany. Their debut solo exhibition entitled Organic Transformations was shown at Tunnel19 in Berlin, from October 14-November 4, 2023.
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In addition to their artistic work, Flyn’s project Leather Saints sees them explore photography through the lens of an archivist and historian. What began as a hobby project during Covid lockdown in 2020 has now evolved into a fully illustrated guide to the lives of every artist, musician, and poet mentioned by name in Patti Smith’s seminal autobiography Just Kids. Through the research of these photo-histories, Flyn has built connections to galleries, curators, arts foundations, and even persons within the book.
Flyn is also a hub leader at Trash Club.