Venice in Solitude

"Venice in Solitude"

from Friday, October 24, 2014 to Saturday, November 22, 2014

Galerie XII Paris

Goethe wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century that everything had already
been said about Venice. Today, one might think that everything has been seen, painted,
photographed, and filmed. And yet the German photographer Christopher Thomas has
found a new way of looking at the city that escapes reality.
Christopher Thomas does not want to show us Venetians, nor to celebrate the colours of the buildings. He worked with a field camera (a Linhof Technika) using black and white Polaroid 55 films. He took his photographs at night or very early in the morning, when objects and places fade into the distance, but they make no reference to romantic nineteenth century views depicting Venice flooded with pale moonlight. Faced with such a diverse city, he cut himself off from immediate reality to create a new visual approach. His photographs are rooted in a form of contemporary urban mysticism, with squares glistening in the mist, buildings with harsh outlines, and silence and solitude everywhere.
“Christopher Thomas’s brilliant intuition is that never for a moment did he think he could sum up Venice. He refuses to adopt an overall approach, and rejects the idea that the substance of Venice can be encapsulated in a detail. He has total respect for the essence of the city. Walking alone at night or in the fog, he comes across fragments of reality here and there. He trains his camera on objects – the Doges’ Palace, a tree, a post. We know that around them, under the sky, reflected in the water, is Venice”.
(Antonio Foscari).

Curator: Ira Stehmann