Archives For Photography
Galerie Karsten Greve is delighted to present This Shimmering World, the new solo exhibition by the American photographer Thomas Brummett, who will unveil selections from his series RIVER and HALOS. Like the rest of his oeuvre, they are part of his vast project, Rethinking the Natural, which he defines himself as “the project of a lifetime”. Immanence and meditative observations shape the genesis of his approach, which celebrates nature in all its forms and tackles the themes of the infinite and the divine.
Download the press release here
I’ve always worked with mining the territory in between drawing and photography. I have over the years repeatedly worked with the idea of the viewer changing their perception the closer they get to my images.
From a distance this work seems like one thing, but as you get closer the visual codes change
to black ink-like Sumi gestures and barren burned out trees. This duality of line and photographic subject is one of the mysterious things photography can achieve which (for me) no other art form can match. In some of these works the river reflections are acting as a type of “Looking Glass” into our possible future.”
Frame study and detail for River Diptych #7 (For Hokusai) which will be in my solo exhibition at Galerie Karsten Greve / Paris titled “This Shimmering World”, in conjunction with Paris Photo.
With the Halos series I have tried to document what the world would look like if we could just have the sensory tools to experience it. We are surrounded by starlight and rainbows every moment. We just can’t see them. These are simply records of refracted light. What would normally be a photographic mistake or defect of the lens. In my world it’s a miracle just waiting for all of us…
“People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures-bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful-call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.” From The Overstory by Richard Powers
I have been drawn to trees all my life and have photographed them extensively over the years. (see the Nocturnes and The Murmur prints) After reading The Overstory now I know why; Trees are incredibly social and wise beings yet humans are somehow far too ignorant to grasp this scientific fact. No one dares to ask why after a walk in the woods they feel better. It’s because you’re with living social beings who contain a quarter of your genetic makeup. They are your family and you should treat them that way.
I was very luck to see Árbol del Tule (The Tree of Tule). It is a tree located on the grounds the town center of Santa María del Tule in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is a Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum), or ahuehuete (meaning “old man of the water” in Nahuatl). The age is at least 3,000 years. It has the stoutest (widest) trunk of any tree in the world. (The next widest tree is a Giant Sequoia with a 8.98 m (29.5 ft) diameter). The DNA was tested to confirm it is one living being and not a group of trees. In 2001 it was placed on a UNESCO tentative list of World Heritage Sites. This tree gives off an immense amount of energy and no doubt why a chapel was built right next to it.
The Tree of Tule is still growing…