Otmar Thormann

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. In addition to his artistic photography, Otmar Thormann also worked as a commissioned photographer in Stockholm. He always kept these two activities strictly separate, using separate photographic equipment for each.

Otmar Thormann's approach to photographic still life is characterized both by the materials he uses and by a process of arranging them in front of the studio camera. The depicted material consistently comes “from the bottom drawer”: 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.

• 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

• http: otmarthormann.com/ • Works by Otmar Thormann at FOTOHOF Archive