THOMAS WUNSCH
ARTIST BIO & ARTIST STATEMENT
Thomas Wunsch, a German photographer, started working in the field of photography at age 17 when he moved to the USA and became a member of the Kodak Young Photographers League. When he opened a photo studio in Hamburg, he devoted himself to fashion, still life, and portrait photography (he took pictures of Barbra Streisand, Sir George Solti, Frank Zappa, Yoko Ono, Ethan Hawke, and many other international celebrities). He also had his first two solo exhibitions in Hamburg at Galerie Palme. After he moved back to the USA, Thomas Wunsch worked as a still photographer at a movie production company for many years.
Thomas Wunsch started taking abstract photographs in the year 2000. These photographs were exhibited at the Huantie Times Art Museum in Beijing, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, the Overbeck Museum in Bremen, the Staedtisches Museum Schloss Bruchsal, the Okgwa Museum in Gokseong, the Huaxia Art Museum in Zhengzhou, the Museum in Wehener Schloss, the Museum Boppard, the Museum Villa Irmgard, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Goethe-Institut in Frankfurt, the Goethe-Institut in Freiburg, the Goethe-Institut in Phnom Penh and numerous galleries throughout the world. Thomas Wunsch took part in group exhibitions also showing the works of Ai Weiwei, Robert Indiana, Thomas Ruff, Walker Evans, Stephen Shore, Sherrie Levine, and Nam June Paik. His photographs are published by the distinguished German record company ECM as LP and CD cover as well.
Thomas Wunsch is curating photography exhibitions in Germany and he has been teaching “Creative Photography” at the Anglo-American University in Prague. He has also held lectures about photography in Germany, the USA, China, Cambodia, and South Korea and he is a jury member at the "Moscow International Photo Awards" and the "London International Creative Competition".
More than 40 books featured his photographs including his most recent ones "Enemies of Reason", "The Impertinence of Beauty" and "Wages of Sin". Thomas Wunsch is a member of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, a founding member of 360 Minutes of Art, a member of Fine Art America, a member of the World Photography Organisation, a member of the American Photography Association, a member of the Aperture Foundation, a member of the Martin Parr Foundation and a member of the International Center of Photography, New York.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Thomas Wunsch is a photographer who captures the inconspicuous details of life in his works. He notices details such as an ashtray at a train station, the pattern on a rusty barrel, the texture of wet pavement, or reflections in a window, that most people dismiss. His works capture more than just an object but the moments the objects were found. He visualizes time in space by using long exposures and physical movements creating an impression of looking at consecutive frames of a movie film fading into each other. In his works, spaces lose their contour and seem to disappear. After scanning his works, Wunsch fills in the in-between spaces on each photograph by extensive digital alterations. Coincidence is a key quality of his pictures that enables him to explore the myth of the ordinary. He is also a gentle and discrete observer, authentic yet not voyeuristic. He is also an aesthete whose attention to detail and sophisticated processing result in highly distinctive photographs.
His photographs depict many different subjects. By making those subjects abstract - beyond recognition - he confers them a special aesthetic value. It is in these pictures that viewers encounter a kafkaesque symbolism and a very different kind of emotion. Viewers can get a sense of time, space, movement, security, or a lack of those qualities. Rather than offering a fixed view of the world, Wunsch leaves his images open to imagination and interpretation. He allows the viewer to become part of his work. His underlying concept is “What you see is what you get.”
His photographs are like mind maps that tell a story of their own. One is reminded of short stories or novels or fragments of memory whose parts are put together like a puzzle. Each photograph displays its own charm. Some show very fine shades of grey or color, while others show very strong contrasts. Thomas Wunsch prefers the square format because it is more democratic. In rectangular pictures, he says, the larger dimension always outweighs the smaller.