The
Artist
Thomas Albdorf
Lives and Works in
Vienna
After working for several years as an Art Director, Thomas Albdorf studied Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, where he graduated in 2013. He was selected as an international “Artists to Watch” by British Journal of Photography in 2014; he won the UNSEEN Amsterdam Talent Award in 2016. He had institutional solo shows at FOAM Amsterdam (NL) and Museum Folkwang (DE), and his work has been exhibited throughout galleries in Europe & the United States. He has been featured in and interviewed for magazines like FOAM Magazine, British Journal of Photography, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Wallstreet Journal, The Guardian and many more. He received the Austrian State Scholarship for Fine Art Photography in 2024.
Projects
2022
Body Double
The series “Body Double” is a portrait of Los Angeles - not the actual city in California, but the abstract place which is embedded in the general consciousness through the representation in popular culture, primarily in movies. “Body Double” is a hike through the streets of the metropolis, partly based on appropriated images - from Google Street View, films, or vintage imagery - partly actually photographed on location in Los Angeles. Almost nothing here is what it appears to be at first glance - the sculptures photographed in the streets as well as in hotel rooms were never in the indicated places, the images are partly automatically deconstructed or created by software; the majority of the works were created in several steps that took place outside and inside the studio.
Every picture questions and discusses its conditions of production, the authenticity of what is shown, and the unconscious expectations and experiences that one brings to the table when looking at an image.
“'Body Double' is a book long portrait of Los Angeles made with appropriated images, constructed images, sculpted images and manifested experiences in conversation with elements, fragments of possible memories coexisting with real deconstructions, and real uncertainties glueing it all together. It takes the viewer on a dazed walk through a city’s self and its double, all filtered by the multitude of versions we might experience of it, or we definitely did experience of it, if only through a possible, unrealistic memory.”
Elisa Medde
Thomas Albdorf
was nominated by
FOTO ARSENAL WIEN
in
Show all projects
Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.
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I’ve always loved photography, even if it sounds like a cliche. The first photos I took, I did without knowing how to do that, without paying any attention to framing, subject or composition. After a while, I began to understand what is happening in the space between me as a photographer and the subject I was photographing. And many years later, I also understood why I love to photograph. To communicate. A message, a concept, an emotion.
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