kampfUnkraut (literally fighting weeds) is a visual exploration of resilience, adaptation, and overlooked forms of life that persist in the margins of social and economic systems. Using false-color infrared imagery, the project renders common weeds and undergrowth in surreal hues and tonalities — transforming what is typically dismissed as trivial or unwanted into a field of vivid presence and material resistance. In doing so, the work reframes these everyday plants not as pests, but as metaphors for the persistence of life under conditions of pressure, neglect, and systemic stress.
The choice of false-color infrared is significant: by shifting our sensory expectations of color and form, it reveals what is normally invisible or devalued in everyday vision. What appears lush, ghostly, or otherworldly in infrared becomes a site of attention and reflection — a reminder that even the humblest life forms have energy, agency, and an insistence on continuation. These plants thrive without cultivation, unremarked yet indomitable, pushing through cracks in pavement and soil alike; their survival becomes a quiet mirror to the human condition during periods of upheaval and uncertainty.
Reflecting on and created against the backdrop of 2024’s economic downturn and ongoing struggles for employment after layoffs, Stephen finds a metaphor of such existence in the everyday environment. kampfUnkraut uses the motif of weeds as a metaphor for precarious existence — lives displaced, systems in flux, and individuals left to find nourishment in unexpected terrain. It uses false-color infrared imagery to isolate these “unwanted” plants that are downtrodden and passed-by, excluded and invisible in indicators and imagery of urban “progress”. The work holds space for persistence without privilege, celebrating the capacity of life to endure and reconfigure itself even when traditional structures fail.
Their ongoing struggle to survive and stubborn tenacity, making their home in the non-spaces of cracks and crevices of impervious urban surfaces, ruptures the smooth polished superficiality of the urban and contemporary zeitgeist. A harsh life, ignored by the well-off, but a struggle no less grand than the romantic landscape photography trope of trees clinging precariously to sides of cliffs.
In this sense, kampfUnkraut is not merely a study of form or technique; it is an ecological and social reflection, asking viewers to reconsider what we value, what we overlook, and how resilience manifests not only in ecosystems, but in lives shaped by precarity and change.
Conceived & Photographed by: Stephen Chen | Completed: 04/10/24
