Thomas Kellner (born May 28, 1966, in Bonn) is a German fine-art photographer, lecturer and curator. He became known above all for his large-format photographs of famous architectural monuments, which, through many individual images and a shifted camera perspective, look like "photo mosaics".
Life
From 1989 to 1996, Kellner studied Art and Social science at the University of Siegen to become a teacher. At the chair of Professor Jürgen Königs, a genuine "school of pinhole camera photography" developed at the University of Siegen's Department of Art, Kellner intensively studied the possibilities and limits of this technique. At the same time he experimented with other methods of photography such as Salt-paper prints and Cyanotype. He also worked with various noble printing processes such as silver gelatine and Gum bichromate.
In 1996, Kellner was awarded the Kodak Young Talent Award. In 2003 and 2004 he was a visiting professor for Fine-art photography at the University of Giessen. In 2012 he held a teaching position for photography at the Paderborn University.
In 2004 Kellner initiated the project Photographers:Network in his hometown, an annual exhibition curated by him with changing themes and international artists. In 2013, the network's last exhibition took place in his studio in Siegen with the tenth exhibition. For this exhibition Kellner had selected works by 18 artists from seven countries and three continents. Starting in 2005, the artist traveled to Brazil several times to take photographs as part of his commission to represent architectural monuments in Brasilia. In 2010 the photos were shown in Brasilia on the occasion of Brasilia's 50th anniversary."
In 2006 Thomas Kellner undertook extensive travels to the United States, Latin America, Syria and China, where he photographed famous monuments such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Boston Athenaeum, and the Great Wall of China in his special technique.
In 2010 he designed a photo project together with pupils from the Gesamtschule Gießen-Ost, which theme was the Telecommunications bunker in Gießen. The project was financially supported by the city of Giessen as part of the competition Stadt der jungen Forscher (City of young researchers). The focus of the students' photographic–artistic work on the bunker was to use Kellner's methodology of deconstructing buildings and reconstructing them in his photographs "as a procedure and transforming it to the conditions on site" (in German "als Verfahren aufzunehmen und auf die Gegebenheiten vor Ort zu transformieren). For this purpose, categories for working with and on the individual components were developed in cooperation with the pupils and topic areas were formulated. Afterwards, the pupils photographed the individual areas with their cameras. The resulting photos were compiled into collages and PowerPoint presentations: "Through the segmentation and subsequent recombination of the different perspectives, a comprehensive and new, but also critical picture of the former bunker complex and the current headquarters of the Musik- und Kunstverein was created[...] The students found the aesthetic examination of National Socialism in a place that is itself a cultural-historical testimony, both haunting and moving." (in German "Durch die Segmentierung und anschließende Neukombination der unterschiedlichen Perspektiven entstand ein umfassendes und neues, aber auch kritisches Bild von der ehemaligen Bunkeranlage und vom heutigen Sitz des Musik- und Kunstvereins.[...] Die ästhetische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Nationalsozialismus an einem Ort, der selbst ein kulturhistorisches Zeugnis ist, empfanden die Schülerinnen und Schüler als eindringlich und bewegend").
In 2012 Thomas Kellner travelled to Russia on behalf of RWE to work in Ekaterinburg and Perm to photograph industrial architecture (Genius Loci). Both cities were founded by Georg Wilhelm de Gennin from Siegen. Gennin was invited by Peter the Great in the 18th century on account of his expertise to promote the economy of the Urals and mining in the region. The factories he founded processed steel and metal. Kellner photographed not only on site in Russia, but also in the surrounding area of Siegen to capture the connection between the two regions in the processing of steel and metal.
Since 2004 Thomas Kellner is a member of the German Society for Photography (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie, DGPh). Kellner lives and works in Siegen.