Plate #03 – Cascades, Yerevan, Armenia, 2026 (detail)

Jan C. Schlegel

Handmade platinum prints from large-format negatives, in which people, organisms and buildings are approached alike: as portraits, presences to be encountered rather than explained.

All works

Jan C. Schlegel began as a fashion and commercial photographer, walked away from it for years to work on humanitarian projects in Africa, living inside the communities he served, and came back to photography a different kind of maker. Now he works slowly and by hand. He photographs on film with large-format cameras, and every print he makes himself in the darkroom, in platinum and palladium, in albumen or silver gelatin, so that each one is a single physical object whose surface and depth belong to the image. Whatever stands before his camera, a person, a jellyfish drifting in the dark or a Brutalist building on a city edge, he meets the way a portraitist meets a sitter: with patience, without a story imposed on it, reduced to what is essential.

On view at PAN Amsterdam 2026, stand 85, 31 Oct – 8 Nov 2026

Silent Giants

2026

Complete setNineteen prints in a handmade portfolio · Edition of 6 + 2 AP

Silent Giants is a series of handmade platinum prints of Brutalist architecture, made with large-format cameras and contact printed from the original negatives. Schlegel photographs buildings not as structures but as presences: quiet, monumental and charged with memory. Spending hours in front of each façade, waiting for the light to soften, he approaches a building the way he approaches a portrait sitter, until what first appears as concrete and design takes on rhythm, tension and stillness. Many of these buildings were born from a utopian belief in the future; today some seem abandoned or out of time, yet in their concrete mass they carry traces of human ambition, failure, resistance and memory.

The complete series comprises nineteen plates, from Hong Kong to Yerevan, Warsaw and Amsterdam. Single prints are offered in two formats; the full set is also available as a handmade portfolio.

A concrete façade made of identical square windows in a dense grid, brightening towards the top and sinking into darkness below; a few pigeons sit along the sloping roof edge. — On view
*Plate #06 – City Parkhouse, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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A tall concrete tower on a pebble beach carrying a saucer-shaped top storey with a band of windows and a smaller disc halfway up its stem, under a soft grey sky. — On view
*From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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A round concrete building on a raised base with a cantilevered upper storey and a curved balcony carrying lettering, seen from below against a pale sky. — On view
*From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
Inquire

A tall triangular concrete spire narrowing to a sharp point against an empty pale sky, with a row of small openings along its edge. — On view
*From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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Curved concrete ramps of a spiral parking structure stacked in tight rows, their thin railings catching the light against deep shadow. — On view
*From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
Inquire

Two concrete residential towers with rows of rounded balconies, connected by a bridge structure, with a crane behind them. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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A sweeping concrete shell curving over a cobbled square, its hollow underside opening towards the viewer. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
Inquire

Façade of an apartment block with staggered rectangular concrete balconies in offset rows, seen from below. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
Inquire

Tower façade of cantilevered concrete boxes projecting at alternating angles, seen from below. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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Angular concrete complex with a tall stair tower, slanted walls and overlapping blocks under a pale sky. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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Close view of a rounded rectangular concrete window set into a striped concrete wall, framing a second rounded window inside it. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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Stepped tower of stacked concrete slabs rising above a low block, with a zebra crossing in the foreground. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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A concrete building on a hillside with an oval upper floor cantilevered far out over the slope, beside power lines. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
40 × 50 · 56 × 76 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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A narrow courtyard between tall apartment façades of stacked balconies, seen from street level with market stalls below. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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A long residential block with rounded balcony stacks and turret-like corners, set behind bare trees. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
40 × 50 · 56 × 76 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
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A round concrete drum with a curved wing and a stepped stair tower rising behind it, with low sheds in the foreground. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
Inquire

A tall slender apartment tower of irregularly stacked concrete boxes, with a bus blurred in motion at street level. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
Inquire

A cylindrical tower with rows of rounded openings rising from a plaza, with trees and distant blocks below. — *From the series Silent Giants, 2026*
Handmade platinum/palladium print on Arches Platine Rag, framed
50 × 40 · 76 × 56 cm
Edition of 6 + 2 AP per format
Inquire

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