Be it artistic works or research findings, the end results are all that generally remain visible of the creative process in art or science. What happens behind closed doors in the laboratory or studio tends to be just as invisible as it is mysterious. Stefanie Bürkle (b. 1966), a Berlin artist and visual arts professor, chose to delve into these sites of creativity, using large and medium-format analogue cameras to photograph laboratories and artists’ studios in Berlin.

Bürkle’s photographic works are spatial portraits showing stage-like environments for innovation and thought filled with materials, tools, experimental setups and apparatuses, whose purpose is concealed from the viewer, yet hints at greatness. The photographs focus on the links, interfaces and parallels between the spatial constructions of the laboratory and the studio that reveal the close correlation between the two as sites of creativity for research and art.

Stefanie Bürkle’s photographs show, as it were, the alchemist’s kitchen of our time. She explores analogies between experiment and process in the studio and laboratory, visually drawing our attention to these workshops of knowledge.