Thormann, Otmar - Ursprung

"I’m often asked: 'Why do your photographs look so old? Are you nostalgic?'
It’s quite the opposite: if you’re nostalgic, you long for the past, but I’ve spent my whole life trying to detach myself from the past.

As a child, back then in the post-war period, I began collecting mental images: motifs like the bombed-out buildings in my home town of Graz.
I would watch and observe war veterans and caretakers, and be amazed by shop windows and steam locomotives.
As a five-year-old I witnessed brutal scenes of slaughtering, but there was no-one I could talk to about them.
Like knots on a piece of string I stored those images within me, images I could rarely make head nor tail of.

The Italian author Cesare Pavese once referred to the places of our childhood as sacred: it is there that as children we experience a piece of the world at first hand,
just for ourselves – and it is only once we are mature that we realise it. My early years gave me not just profound experiences; they also gave me energy and inspiration to pick up on those impressions.
Later on I unconsciously searched for, found and photographed the mental images of my childhood. I also reconstructed and created images just so I could photograph them.

These photographs were particularly helpful in resolving undesirable impressions. They allowed me to see through what I had not understood and free myself from deeply rooted experiences.
Becoming aware of things, understanding things past, is not as simple as you think; in fact it is as hard as trying to untie a tightly pulled knot on a piece of string." (© Otmar THORMANN)