Thomas Albdorf is “shifting perceptions” of contemporary photography

Austrian photographer Thomas Albdorf creates strangely composed images which make you ask how on earth he has actually created them. His use of hue and focus makes you think they could be taken using film, but the abnormal added aspects make you swear they must be digital.

Confusing or “shifting perceptions” of photography is a regular theme in Thomas’ work as his “main interest focuses on photography and sculpture – in particular, the intersection area between both practices,” says his bio. Using objects in a sculptural context is a key subject in the photographer’s most recent series and subsequent publication, General View.

In photographing phone screens, already developed photos or a statuette of flowers in shot glasses, General View relates back to the cross disciplinary approach to Thomas’ photography. “The basic photograph doesn’t officiate as an enclosed image rather than a space of possibilities and probabilities,” he says, “primarily enabled via digital post production processes that often leave their visible marks in the final work, revealing their source as well as bringing their conditions of production up for discussion.”

Thomas’ photography career has developed from working as a graphic designer and art director, before studying Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Since graduating in 2013, the photographer has received a number of accolades, starting as one of the British Journal of Photography’s “Artists to Watch” in 2014 and winning the Unseen Amsterdam Talent Award in 2016. A project such as General View, displays the photographer using his multiple creative skills creating images that as Foam Amsterdam’s curator Hinde Haest puts it, “stretch traditional photographic genres and form a commentary of the changing role of the image”.