Otmar Thormann

Otmar Thormann (born 1944 in Graz, lives in Stockholm) is an Austrian–Swedish photographer.

Life Otmar Thormann's father was a “diligent amateur photographer,” and inspired by his fascination, Thormann wanted from an early age to learn the profession of photography. However, because of poor career prospects and on his father's advice, he initially trained as a cook and pastry chef in Graz. In 1965 he left Austria and moved to Stockholm, where he first worked as a cook, then signed on to the passenger ship MS Kungsholm and traveled around the world. This journey proved decisive for his decision to become a photographer. Since around 1968, Stockholm has been his permanent place of residence. He attended evening classes at the Stockholm School of Photography, worked as an assistant to the photographer Walter Hirsch, and from 1970 onward was able to establish himself as a freelance photographer.

Photographic work His early artistic works (up to around 1990) are strongly influenced by the Czech photographer Josef Sudek; in addition, Thormann also cites Weegee, Diane Arbus, and Paul Outerbridge, and he considers them formative for his photography. According to photography journalist and editor of Camera Austria Magazine Christina Töpfer, images for Thormann are “bearers of secrets, whose symbolic value extends beyond what is depicted”; they are “primarily still lifes that oscillate between documentary black-and-white photography and almost surreal dream images.”

According to editor Kurt Kaindl, the early 1990s mark a pivotal point in Thormann's photographic work — a moment when his earlier style, “his surrealist-influenced view of the world, photographed in the style of reportage,” merges with his later style, which is devoted intensively, if not exclusively, to still life. Thormann himself regards the still-life cycle Formfiguren (1997) as an endpoint of his photography; after its completion, he produced no further new work. fragments of found objects, plants, fabrics, wood, sand, animal carcasses — in other words, casually found things, or things that hardly possess form at all, such as hair, plant fibers, ropes, or liquids. Serge Tisseron describes them as “objects that have lost their function but acquired the ability to recall their origin, without having any future.” The process of arranging these objects is of central importance to Thormann. It is a “dynamic, associative process beyond the artist’s own control,” a play with his own unconscious, through which he seeks to reconstruct formative mental images from his childhood in Graz — often only becoming fully aware of the (re)created contents when viewing the photographs themselves.

Kurt Kaindl locates an intrinsic contradiction in Thormann's approach to photographic still life: Thormann's working method is dynamic and involves chance and the unconscious — often a “dynamic and often for him uncontrollable happening,” an “openness towards a development which he initiates, yet which he cannot and will not entirely steer himself. The image emerges as a surprise for him.” This stands in contrast to the potential and customary control that studio photography allows over the parameters of image production. That Thormann photographs the carefully constructed object arrangements and regards the photographic prints as his artistic end product—rather than exhibiting the arrangements themselves—contains an element of distancing, an “exorcism,” as Serge Tisseron describes it.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

2014: Ursprung, Fotohof, Salzburg 2007: Xiang, Acne, Stockholm 2002: Early Works, Photographs 1970 – 85, Galerie Faber, Wien 2002: Scheitel, Moderna Museet, Stockholm 1995: Formfguren, Rupertinum, Salzburg 1992: Lichtbild Galerie, Worpswede 1991: Palais du Tau, Reims 1990: Fotohof, Salzburg 1988: Fotogalerie Wien 1988: Galerie Michèle Chomette, Paris 1987: The Vision Gallery, Boston 1987: Malmö Konsthall 1984: Moderna Museet, Stockholm 1984: Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 1982: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 1981: Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels 1978: Galerie Nagel, Berlin 1974: Fotografiska, Stockholm

Books 2013: Origins. Salzburg: FOTOHOF>EDITION. 1990: Low Moral. Dreaming Dogs. Salzburg: Edition Fotohof im Otto Müller Verlag, Volume 3. 1988: Otmar Thormann. Malmö: Malmö Konsthall. Katalog 121. 1983: Fotografier–Variationer. Stockholm: Fotografiska Museet. 1979: Otmar Thormann. Catalog for the exhibition at Camera Obscura - Gallery for Photographic Art, Stockholm

Awards 1985: Otto Breicha Award