SLEEK Editions: In Conversation with Thomas Friedrich Schaefer

Truth by definition is in “accordance with fact or reality.” But what exactly is truth if reality is shaped by an individual’s own experience in the present, and shaped by the memories of the past?

Born in Mainz and raised in Sao Paolo, photographer Thomas Friedrich Schaefer is fascinated by the duality of truth and fiction. His cultural upbringing and his later travels to South America, Europe, South East Asia, Western Africa and North America gave Schaefer the opportunity to observe different social environments and his experiences provided the narrative framework for moments of interpersonal relationship in his hyper-realistic, staged photographs.

Originally an architecture student, Schaefer quickly found inspiration in spatial effects. “The way elements in an environment can form a visual composition […] led me to photography in hopes that it could be a language I could use to express myself.” Using photography to realise his vision, the second crucial element that forms the foundation of Schaefer’s body of work, most notably, in his series ‘Empirical Tableaux,’ which was featured in SLEEK issue 70 is the relationship between the space and individual that impacts our memory. He explains, “I read Gaston Bachelard’s book ‘Poetry of the Space,’ which is about the way in which rooms and spaces have an impact on our memory. Even more, he describes the way that our first memories and feelings are defined in and by the rooms of our family home: memories of ‘hiding in the attic,’ ‘locking things away in the basement.’”

Schaefer’s ‘Empirical Tableaux’ has a way of filling the viewer’s heart with an immense sense of nostalgia triggered by the most ordinary scenes. The feeling of looking at a usual occurrence, an everyday moment, is the experience Schaefer wants to create, relatable for any viewer, inducing a familiar memory despite the characters unknown to them. “The way we see the world is shaped not just by our environment but far more by the relationship between what we’re experiencing in the present and our memories of what we’ve experienced in the past.”

Experience Thomas Friedrich Schaefer’s ‘Empirical Tableaux’ series available now at SLEEK Store.