Jan von Holleben

Born in 1977 in southern Germany, Jan von Holleben lived most of his youth in an alternative commune and identifies a strong connection between the development of his photographic work and the influence of his parents, a cinematographer and child therapist. At the age of thirteen, he was picking up a camera and experimenting with all sorts of magical tricks, developing his photographic imagination and skills. After pursuing studies in teaching children with disabilities, he moved to London, earned a degree in the Theory and History of Photography at Surrey Institute of Art and Design and became submerged within the London photographic scene. He quickly set up two photographic collectives, Young Photographers United and Photodebut, followed more recently by the Photographer’s Office and the publishing house Tarzipan. His body of photographic work focusing on the homo ludens – the man who learns through play – is itself built from a playful integration of pedagogical theory with his own personal experiences of play and memories of childhood. Von Holleben’s idiosyncratic images have become part of the contemporary German photographic imagination. Shifting between fine art and editorial projects, Holleben is known as much for his collaborations with the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, London and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin as for his editorial work for Spiegel, Zeit, DU Magazin, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Geo, and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin as well as his ad campaigns for the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (to name only a few). His books have been published in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and North America and are translated into seventeen languages.