Hypothesis

It is often dif­fi­cult for us to form an image of basic scien­ti­fic rese­arch. Yet the very basis of tomor­row’s pro­gress is the con­stant search for ever new insight. Since the Enligh­ten­ment, scien­ti­fic know­ledge has pro­vi­ded the foun­da­ti­ons for indus­tria­li­sa­tion and modern society. Today, basic rese­arch is like a per­pe­tuum mobile pro­vi­ding ever new know­ledge that will later be imple­men­ted in con­crete inno­va­ti­ons through app­lied rese­arch. At the end of this chain are tech­no­lo­gies which can fun­da­men­tally alter our society, such as, for exam­ple, the Inter­net. The pho­to­gra­phy pro­ject entit­led Hypo­the­sis addres­ses the theme of science and rese­arch, rai­sing ques­ti­ons about our rela­ti­on­ship to nature and our sur­roun­dings. This photo-essay is divi­ded into four sec­ti­ons: the chap­ter Time deals with geo­lo­gi­cal time or chro­no­me­try; the chap­ter Space shows, among other things, obser­va­to­ries which gaze into the depths of space; the Matter sec­tion pro­vi­des insight into rese­arch on the smal­lest par­tic­les in nature, while the sec­tion Life deals with basic rese­arch invol­ving animal and plant orga­nisms. The four areas com­ple­ment each other to form a photo series that drafts a cosmos of its own – a pic­to­rial mega-labo­ra­tory which, partly freed of the out­side world and without a con­crete gui­de­line, com­plies with a single aim: to pro­vide tomor­row’s world with new insight.

In the book Hypo­the­sis each pho­to­graph is accom­pa­nied by a text writ­ten by Inke Suhr on the rese­arch work depic­ted.

Har­t­­mann Books, 2020, ISBN 978-3-96070-040-1
Text: Urs Stahel (Eng­­lish/German)
Design: Ste­phan Fied­ler
112 pages, 45 colour plates, hard­­co­­ver 30 x 22,5 cm
har­t­­mann­pro­jects.com