Pink Depression

A coastal landscape with a blue sky on the horizon—algae in the water and clusters of mollusks propagating on a rocky shore; a woman dressed in pink floating in the water with her face down, her limbs spread out like those of a starfish, hands holding on to a rock. The image recalls Shakespeare’s Ophelia, or rather the well-known painting of the same name (1851–2) by John Everett Millais, in which the young noblewoman is floating in a stream. In the painting, Ophelia is still alive, but we know that her clothes, heavy with water, are beginning to drag her down.

Here too, there is a sense of unease and urgency to the artificial pink of the woman’s clothing and the stillness of her body. The photograph by Barbara & Michael Leisgen is part of their Pink Depression series (1982–4), shot in settings that speak to the destruction of nature through human activity: coastlines teeming with algae, polluted lakes, cleared forests. The series came on the heels of another, Mimesis—black-and-white photographs in which Barbara Leisgen’s body, its back facing the camera, both stands out against and blends in with the landscape in the background.

After meeting in art school in Karlsruhe in the 1960s, Barbara and Michael Leisgen abandoned their respective disciplines of painting and sculpture to pursue work as an artist duo. They chose analog photography as a their medium, as they found it to depend less on facture—the material evidence of the artist’s making embedded in the artwork—and therefore well-suited to equal collaboration. The couple first settled in East Belgium, where they worked for many years before moving to nearby Aachen, across the German border. Although they traveled all over Europe for their work, many of the duo’s photographs were shot in Belgium—including the image from the Pink Depression series, captured in and around rivers and brooks polluted by waste from a nearby aluminum plant.

The Leisgens were never formally trained in photography and approached the medium from a conceptual standpoint: they considered the camera as a tool and the film as a physical material, both of which could be manipulated. With Mimesis and their later series Sonnenschriften (Sunwritings)—in which they used sunlight to burn letters into the negatives—Barbara & Michael Leisgen wanted to explore what they perceived as an ancient human inclination to mimic nature and its forms. These works urge us to reconnect with the stars, the Earth, and the sky, and to “read what has never been written,” as they put it.

In Pink Depression, the Leisgens’ concern for the exploitation of the environment becomes more explicit: Barbara is no longer upright but horizontal and therefore vulnerable, her body contaminated by the landscape rather than just visually tracing it. Her silhouette and appearance are coded as feminine, yet the pink clothing contrasts starkly with the atmosphere of danger, death, and decay looming over the photographs.

These images resonate with an idea central to ecofeminism: that all parts of Earth and life are interconnected. By damaging nature, we harm ourselves, too. Ecofeminism argues that the exploitation of the environment is a result of a patriarchal societal order, in which supposedly masculine values of domination and conquest triumph over the acts that produce and sustain and nurture daily life. People in power exploit nature as a resource at their disposal—especially to serve the accumulation of wealth—similarly to how men have treated women as property throughout much of history.

The series was created in a period marked by major transformations in agriculture, the so-called “Green Revolution” in the 1980s. Global industrialization of food production led to an unprecedented intensification of land use and the rise of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. At the same time, public awareness of ecological problems, such as pollution and forest dieback, began to grow. This shift also profoundly impacted many artists, as the meaning of “landscape”—a seasonally fitful but otherwise timeless artistic subject—shifted. Where it had once been possible to treat nature as a pure and bucolic backdrop, it now became a theater with its own shifting forces, a space of intervention. While the Leisgens’ work is inevitably related to the then-burgeoning movements of Land Art and Environmental Art—as represented by figures such as Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt, Ana Mendieta, Bernd and Hilla Becher, or Gordon Matta-Clark—their particular approach to photography, landscape, and the human body defies easy categorization.

The ecological concerns of the 1980s now seem almost quaint compared to the dire present and alarming predictions on the climate and biodiversity crises. Yet this exhibition confronts us with the fundamental and undeniable bodily reality of existence on Earth. At a time when corporations and politicians alike try to sell the speculative idea of an artificial superintelligence suddenly solving all of humanity’s problems—and use this vision to justify the destruction of natural resources and human labor at unprecedented scales—these works are particularly urgent and poignant. Our cells, our bodies are in constant movement and exchange with their surroundings; like the works in Pink Depression, this reciprocity is both frightening and beautiful, a warning and an opportunity.

This exhibition is the result of a long-standing relationship between IKOB and Barbara & Michael Leisgen. Due to the couple’s connection to East Belgium, IKOB has long held some of their works in its collection. Since Barbara Leisgen’s passing in 2017, Michael Leisgen has been working to complete their oeuvre, as the artists did not always have the necessary budgets to create prints of all their works. Though taken more than forty years ago, these photographs are on public display for the very first time. They are now part of the museum’s collection, making IKOB a key institution for the preservation and dissemination of the Leisgens’ work.

To further champion and safeguard their oeuvre and legacy, IKOB will publish the first monographic publication of Barbara & Michael Leisgen’s work in 2027. All proceeds from the sale of a special edition of 10 prints, titled Das Tal der Menschheit (the valley of humanity), will go toward funding this endeavor. The edition is on view and available for purchase on the ground floor of the museum along with more information.

Exhibition supported by Kunststiftung NRW and Ostbelgien.