Lena Herzog on dying languages

Lena Herzog is a visual artist and photographer who lives in Los Angeles. Born in the Ural mountains of Russia, she moved to the city of St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) to study Languages and Literature at Leningrad University. She immigrated to the United States in 1990 and worked at Stanford University two years later as a research consultant. She then completed her BA in Philosophy at Mills College, specializing in the history and the philosophy of science and doing a comparative study of the paradigm shift theories of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend.

In 1997, she discovered photography, and apprenticed to Italian and French printmakers, with a special interest in early and alternative photographic processes. Her work now ranges from classical documentary to the experimental and conceptual.

Her photography has been featured and reviewed in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Cabinet Magazine, The Believer, Vanity Fair, among others, and she is a regular contributing artist to Harper's Magazine. She is the author of six books of photography and her work has been internationally exhibited. Her book "Strandbeest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen", was published by TASCHEN in 2015. 

In this interview, Lena and Robert discuss Herzog's new immersive sound and video installation entitled: "Last Whispers, Oratorio for Vanished Voices, Collapsing Universes and A Falling Tree”, which recently premiered at The British Museum. 

For more information, please visit her website, www.lenaherzog.com