| | | | | | | | Christopher Thomas
Bittersweet 103, 2020
Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper
150 x 200 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP (#1/3) | | | | | | BITTERSWEET | | | | 7 June – 31 August, 2021 | | | Book signing event with the artist: 8 June and 9 June as well as 7 July and 8 July
Due to the Covid19 related restrictions admissions to the events are limited.
Please book your spot ahead of time, either by e-mail or by phone +49 (0)171 2641293. | | | Christopher Thomas: "Bittersweet"
136 pages with 60 color illustrations
Hardcover book, 35 x 43 cm
Limited edition of 500, numbered 1-500
Published 2020 | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Christopher Thomas
Bittersweet 04, 2016
Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper
60 x 80 cm
Edition of 7 + 2 APs (#4/7) | | | | | | Ira Stehmann Fine Art is presenting the exhibition Bittersweet. On display will be a selection of fifteen photographs by Munich-based photographer Christopher Thomas, who is best known for his city portraits as well as his work on the Oberammergau Passion Play.
Bittersweet addresses two opposing, contradictory terms. When looking at the pictures, however, it becomes clear that the pair of opposites seems very suitable for expressing the unspeakable.
Christopher Thomas has taken the pictures for Bittersweet over the last ten years in various countries on several continents. Thus, he shows the viewer symbols that remind him of childhood and a sense of happiness: merry-go-rounds, ice cream cones, bubble gum machines, circus tents, fairs, cotton candy, wonder bags, roller skates, ferris wheels, tricycles, and more. These symbols are embedded in rural and urban landscapes. In most of the images, people are non-existent. We immediately think of our lost childhood, of spontaneity and immediacy. However, behind all the sometimes superficially seductive images lurks the fear of the loss of bliss and the undeniable power of transience.
Since time immemorial, the fear of death - a transition into a "dimension" unknown to us - has been great. In general, everything that smells of change is mysterious and sometimes threatening to people.
Christopher Thomas' pictorial worlds thematize decay and finitude. Places such as Chernobyl in Ukraine, which was scarred by the nuclear reactor accident, are changing. The artist photographed on site a child's doll amid gas masks left on the ground, empty cribs, and a hauntingly empty gymnasium. Abandoned amusement parks, whose formerly operating attractions such as roller coasters and giant representations of dinosaurs are already gnawed by the ravages of time, move into the artist's interest.
Many years ago, an English author reviewed Christopher Thomas' series New York Sleeps and wrote: "Thomas seems to be obsessed with the past." The author is right; in the new series, too, Thomas is preoccupied with places where something was and is no longer so, where something has changed. Even as a young boy, he loved going to folk festivals and beer festivals and returning to the place the next year and imagining how it used to be.
Christopher Thomas' Bittersweet recordings span the potential joy of life and the melancholy sense of loss. | | | | | | | | | Christopher Thomas
Bittersweet 02, 2012
Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper
60 x 80 cm
Edition of 7 + 2 APs (#3/7) | | | | | | Christopher Thomas was born in Munich in 1961 and graduated from the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie. He has received a number of international awards as a commercial photographer. His photographs have been published in many magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Geo, Stern, and Merian.
In the 1990s, Thomas also worked as a photographer for aid organizations such as Nepra e. V. and DAHW (German Leprosy and Tuberculosis Relief Organization) on numerous trips to Nepal, India, and Ethiopia, for which he received the World Press Award and the Epica Award (both 1995) as well as the Gold Medal (1995) at the New York Festival. Between 2012 and 2016 he accompanied an international group of female plastic surgeons on their travels to India and Bangladesh documenting their work.
As an artist, Christopher Thomas has established a reputation above all through his city portraits. His series Munich Elegies was published in 2005 by Schirmer / Mosel Verlag. This was followed in 2009 by the series New York Sleeps published by Prestel Verlag.
In 2010 Christopher Thomas photographed amateur actors and actresses during rehearsals for the Passion Play in Oberammergau. The result was a series of fifty-six portraits, reminiscent of paintings by Old Masters, which evoke the spirit of the Passion Play. These portraits were published in a book titled Passion by Prestel Verlag in the same year. Christopher Thomas received several awards for this cycle, including the silver medal of the Art Directors Club Germany (2011) and the German Design Award (2013).
He has published numerous books including Venice in Solitude (Prestel Verlag, 2012), Leitzachtal (2013), Paris – City of Light (Prestel Verlag, 2014), Engadin (2015), Female Prestel Verlag, 2016), Lost in L. A. (Prestel Verlag, 2017), Bodensee (2020) and Bittersweet (2020).
Works by Christopher Thomas can be seen worldwide in renowned photo galleries and at trade fairs, but also in large private and institutional collections such as the François Pinault Collection, the Nicola Erni Collection, the Sir Elton John Photo Collection, the Art Collection of the German Bundestag and many others. | | | | | | | | | Christopher Thomas
Bittersweet 102, 2020
Archival pigment print on cotton rag paper
90 x 120 cm
Edition of 5 + 2 APs (#1/5) | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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