Strandbeest ─ The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen

For the past seven years, photographer and artist Lena Herzog has followed the evolution of a new, kinetic species. Intricate as insects, but with bursts of equine energy, the "Strandbeests" or "beach creatures", are the passionate project of Dutch artist Theo Jansen, who has been working for nearly two decades to create a new life-form that moves, and even survives, on its own. Picking up the wind in gossamer wings, the Strandbeests suddenly acquire uncanny, animate movements, as if it were blood, not the breeze, running through their delicate forms, and living tissue, not plastic tubing, that made up their scuttling limbs.

Coinciding with a travelling exhibition, this photographic tribute from Herzog captures Jansen's menagerie on the beaches of Holland where, through a process of evolution, they now trot against the sun, sand and sea, pausing to change direction if they sense loose sand or water that might destabilize their movement. Carefully composed in a meditative black and white, Herzog's images celebrate Jansen's imaginative vision, as much as they show the eerie intersection of animate and inanimate in his creatures. The result is a work of art in its own right and a mesmerizing encounter with a very surrealist brand of marvelous, and with whole new ideas of existence.

Text in English, French, and German