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This February and March 2012 Bernheimer Fine Art Photography is presenting an exhibition of photographs of Venice by Christopher Thomas entitled Venice - In Solitude. Photographs by Christopher Thomas at the Gallery in Brienner Strasse, Munich. 

The exhibition will comprise a selection of over forty photographs by the Munich-based photographer Christopher Thomas, celebrated for his City Portraits: New York Sleeps (2009) und Münchner Elegien (Munich Elegies) (2001–2005). In his new cycle of works Venice - In Solitude Christopher Thomas captivates us with his charmingly atmospheric pictures of a City of Silence, empty of people and standing completely on its own, which take us back to the photographic views of Venice as it was in the nineteenth-century. 

For this exhibition the curator Ira Stehmann, working together with Christopher Thomas in consultation with Blanca Bernheimer, has selected works, which for the first time are presented here on a large scale. Christopher Thomas took the photographs with a large-format camera using a black and white Polaroid Type 55 film, which is no longer produced. It is this, which enables these photographs to achieve a degree of detail and fine tonal nuances very rarely found in modern photography. The show coincides with the publication, by Prestel Verlag, of a monograph on Christopher Thomas’s photographs of Venice, which will be available at the opening of the exhibition.
 

In his efforts to capture the true vision of Venice, Christopher Thomas took up residence there at the beginning of 2010 becoming a temporary inhabitant of the city. He brought away with him a bundle of 100 works from which a representative selection has been made for this exhibition. These included classic views of the palaces along the Grand Canal, the Doge’s Palace, the Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge and many others. But he also strayed from these well-known paths to photograph areas of the city which are not part of our collective store of memories of Venice: abandoned canals and workshops in Cannaregio, the narrow streets in Castello decked with washing-lines and the Gondola shipyard of San Trovaso in Dorsoduro. In the grey of morning when the City is still asleep, shortly before dusk or at night-time by moonlight Christopher Thomas sets out with his heavy bags containing a Linhof Technika Large format camera, a slection of lenses, a tripod, a velvet cloth, and several packets of Polaroid 55 Filmmaterial and makes his way through the Sestiere, the different districts of the city.

Bacino di San Marco I, 2010 © Christopher Thomas / Courtesy Bernheimer Fine Art

Christopher Thomas´s personal vision, his sensibility and his knowledge of his craft are reflected in these pictures, which restore Venice’s mystery and give back its secret to the City. « It is a search to find again the peace of Venice which we know from nineteenth-century views and rescue to the City from the clutches of mass tourism ». (Christopher Thomas)