Simon Lehner (1996) lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He is currently graduating in Photography at the University of Applied Arts of Vienna. With his series “How far is a lightyear?“ he won the Paris-Photo Carte Blanche Award 2018 + the Paris-Photo Maison Ruinart Prize and exhibited the series in Paris at the Gare du Nord and Grand Palais during Paris-Photo.
He was nominated and presented his portfolio at the Plat(t)form Winterthur 2019 and was selected as one of 5 special mentions for his body of work. His ongoing book project “Men don’t play“ was shortlisted for the Unseen Dummy Award in 2017. Previously, his work was featured in The British Journal of Photography, die Zeit, Ignant, L’Uomo Vogue, Numéro, Vice Magazine, and various others. Lehner has exhibited in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Russia and Austria.
Simon Lehner’s work comes from personal experiences and has a documentary core as it explores contemporary issues, social structures, psychology and its relation to current human and social developments through direct and embedded observation.
About ‘How far is a lightyear?’:
“How far is a lightyear?“ (2005-2019) investigates fatherhood, love and the development of identity through family.
We follow the viewpoint of a boy who resembles me as a child as he finds himself having to balance two conflicting sides while being stuck in the firing line of a bad love story and domestic violence.
The title stems from a question I asked my father when I first met him in 2005. It references the passed time since he left my family again but also the medium of photography.
The series uses a 3D Renderings/Scan method consisting out of the only images I took of my father dating back to 2005 when I was 9 years old.
Through this method of digitally piecing and reconstructing him with the images I have left, I have the chance to make my father tangible in a digital space as I try to make a portrait without physical contact – hinting at the longing for a father, emotional and physical distance but simultaneously resentment due to his actions.
