Everything flows, seems to be in motion, hardly anything seems static in the recordings of Thomas Kretschmann’s “Muse” series. The figure, the dress, the water, the air bubbles, the sunlight – it almost seems to be a dance of the elements, captured in a moment and yet not frozen. Fixed and yet free and floating.
Thomas Kreschmann in the Leica Gallery in Munich.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Thomas Kretschmann, German actor living in Los Angeles, has been taking photos for about ten years: privately, while working on the set, with friends. On the occasion of his first solo exhibition, which can be seen in the Leica Gallery in Munich, he says that he now has his camera with him pretty much everywhere to take pictures. This is how portraits of famous colleagues were created. And a corresponding name drop would certainly have generated even more publicity. But at the last minute he decided not to show these star portraits. Instead, he concentrates entirely on the underwater series “Muse”, in which he follows his partner, model Brittany Rice, with the camera as she dance underwater.
From the series “Muse” by Thomas Kretschmann.
(Photo: Thomas Kretschmann)
This concentration is actually good for the exhibition, even if it seems repetitive at one point or another. But focus is important to him: “It would be nonsense and superficial to mix this up with something else,” he emphasizes, while he lets his gaze wander over the exhibition with satisfaction. This expresses in a very poetic way that Kretschmann does not see photography as a still image, but rather as a film, as a sequence of images. He achieves this effect all the more when he puts the concrete figure aside in favor of details or captures the figure in strong movement, so that the flow of the dress, the movement of the waves and the rising of the air bubbles determine the composition of the picture.
The starting point of the series was not just the idea of the floating figure, but rather how the white dress in the water plays around the figure and flows around it. “In the end, it’s all about memories,” he says while standing in front of his favorite motif, entitled “Muse II”. It is “about light and shadow and about reflections – all of this is woven into a picture”. It is intentional that this creates blurring, something like a filter and looks very painterly. “In some of these photos photography and painting merge, there are always new details to discover.” That is also what interests him. “Here and there I find parallels to Egon Schiele, to church painting, to Da Vinci and to Japanese paper cutting. We dive into a sea of colors; the room is dark and seems endless.”
From the series “Muse” by Thomas Kretschmann.
(Photo: Thomas Kretschmann)
Kretschmann was once completely at home in this infinity of water. Born in Dessau, the actor and photographer was a competitive swimmer in his youth, is a member of the GDR Olympic squad and has won several championship titles. In 1983, at the age of 21, he fled the GDR all by himself via Hungary, Yugoslavia and Austria to the FRG. In the meantime, he rarely speaks about this escape. But three years ago he spoke to the SZ about the film launch of the German-German escape story “Ballon” by Michael Herbig, in which he played a Stasi agent. Also in the talk show “3 to 9”. The sequence is very emotional today on Youtube to see. Kretschmann completed an acting training in Berlin and was soon in front of the camera. For his film debut in “Der Mitwisser” he was honored as the best young actor at the Max Ophüls Filmfest in 1991. And after he had played alongside Adrien Brody in Polanski’s “The Pianist”, Hollywood had noticed him too.
Numerous film roles in Hollywood followed, in German and international productions and some television series. He was seen in “Der Untergang” by Oliver Hirschbiegel as well as in Bryan Singer’s “Operation Valkyrie – Das Stauffenberg-Assentat”, where he even played the leading role for a time (which Tom Cruise then got). He is currently in front of the camera at a film production in Estonia and two months ago he shot “Indiana Jones 5” with Harrison Ford – where he also took quite a lot of photos, as he reveals at the meeting in Munich. However, the recordings are currently under lock and key until the film is expected to hit cinemas.
In the series “Muse”, the photographer and actor Thomas Kretschmann photographed his long-time partner and muse Brittany Rice in a multi-part underwater cycle. Both of them came to Munich for the opening of the exhibition in the Leica Gallery.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Kretschmann has lived in Los Angeles for 25 years, but also likes to spend part of the year in Berlin. Kretschmann has been together with Brittany Rice for ten years now. She too was once a swimmer, so she shares Kretschmann’s love for water, which is why both of them “feel at home” in the element. Nevertheless, Kretschmann did not take photos underwater, but from outside. Most of the recordings were made in the home pool in Los Angeles. As much as Kretschmann’s muse Brittany Rice is in motion in most of the recordings, there are also some in which she seems to be floating in the void, tender and waxy like the dead Ophelia. But Kretschmann does not want to know anything about a longing for death as a metaphor. “I don’t have a longing for death at all, but I think it’s great when everyone finds other associations with my pictures. I prefer that to being able to impose an idea on them.”
Thomas Kretschmann: Muse, Leica Galerie, Maffeistr. 4, through December 31