FROM INVISIBLE TO VISIBLE
The photographic metamorphisms of Thomas Pizer

Introduction for the 2019 Deutsch Museum exhibition by
Prof. Dr. Beate Reifenscheid
Curator and Director of the

Ludwig Museum, Koblenz
President of the international council of museums Germany

Photographic Metamorphisms

Being able to get to know the rainforest in the deepest part of the Amazon is very special. The particularity lies in the respect and caution with which Thomas Pizer travels photographically in these remote territories. This becomes visible in these photographic works where man and nature meet in such a way that they live a symbiotic coexistence. 

Indigenous peoples blend completely with nature and become one with the sparkling and colourful fauna and flora that surround them. 

By manipulating the colours of the original photos, he creates a completely new atmosphere of this wonderful natural creation. The metamorphoses of colours are capable of increasing beauty and fascination and beyond that, we can observe that they also contribute to the development and perception of this isolated and threatened world. 

Thus oscillate, the admiration and closeness, with distance and irritation, that Thomas Pizer skillfully integrates one into the other in his photographic experiences. 

His main concern is to preserve this forest, which is essential to humanity, so that indigenous peoples can protect it. 

The natives allowed Thomas Pizer to feel this sweet closeness to them and their environment, to live in immersion among them and with them, so that his art could finally contribute to better understand this last refuge and so that we could immerse ourselves in it as well. 

This attitude is quite rare among photographers who devote themselves to observing nature. 

But Thomas Pizer not only visits the Amazon, he can also witness subtly and authentically different places. Even if he lets the spectator participate, he keeps him at a distance by the superimposing of colours. 

Beyond the artificiality of our increasingly alienated perception of life, Thomas Pizer’s work will evoke and show us how much the beauty and integrity of nature have been taken away from us. 

This succeeds in a unique symbiosis of nature and art.

“THE AMAZONAUTS” series

The primary forest as you have never seen it, that of an Amazon where the spirits of the thousand-year-old forests, revealed to Thomas Pizer during his absolute immersions, invade the smallest particle of plant or animal life. These worlds, invisible to the layman’s eye, are restored to you thanks to a photographic work inspired by the desire to testify that enchantment has always existed and that nature is its sanctuary.

The indigenous peoples of Amazonia, including the Surui, unknown to the white man fifty years ago, or the Ashanika, great guardians of millenary knowledge, taught their white brother, Thomas Pizer, to perceive this invisible, vibrant, impalpable and essential energy. Other beings, other civilizations see with other “eyes” allowing a relationship with the living that is very different from ours.

AYA
AYA
MARISHORI
MARISHORI
Ashaninka woman
PUWE
PUWE
Puyanawa leader

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