Thomas Billhardt – His life In pictures at Camera Work May 6, 2017 – Posted in: Blog

By Elisa from Hof, Source and full article

When he presses the trigger, he is not afraid. No matter what is happening around him. Whether bombs are falling, a civil war rages, or Fidel Castro calls the socialist world revolution. He has seen all this. But when he looks through the viewfinder of his camera, hunting for the one image, he suddenly feels no more fear. There is only the longing for the photo. Thomas Billhardt has traveled around the world with his camera for more than sixty years. In Cuba he was, Madagascar, New York and North Korea, in Italy, South Africa, Moscow and Baghdad.

Countless photos of travels in 49 countries

The list could be continued, more and more. Billhardt traveled to 49 countries, countless photos from every trip. Many have appeared in magazines and magazines, have been presented in exhibitions, have brought it to international popularity. Just like his pictures from the Vietnam War. Wherever napalm rained down and humble human life, Billhardt drew twelve times. His photograph, on which a Vietnamese couple strolling hand-in-hand among palm branches, the rifles on their backs, always made him famous.

The idyll always interested him

This illusion, in which war and everyday life meet, still interest him. In May, Billhardt becomes 80 years old. That is why Galerie Camera Work is dedicated to the exhibition “Thomas Billhardt – A Life in Pictures”. From today’s Saturday, 100 of his photographs can be seen in the gallery on Kantstrasse.

When Billhardt goes through the bright rooms, he points to this photo and to that. Everyone knows a story. He forgot nothing. “As a photographer you always look closely, you are close, you look more intense,” he says, looking over his glasses. His photos have been deeply engraved in him like engravings in a piece of jewelry. Just, Billhardts are invisible. It is only in the narrative, when he strokes his cheek with his hand, and travels back and forth between the years and the globe, that they become visible. Like the memories of his Cuba trip.

Photographing only learned from the mother1961 is this and Billhardt may, that surprised him today a bit, from his home, the GDR, to Cuba to travel. Until then, he says, he really wanted to go to the West, not to stay in the GDR. And this 24-year-old Billhardt, who first learned to photograph from his mother and then studied with dismay – “I was a lot further than the other students” – gets off the plane with the camera and is thrilled. “These beautiful women, this passion, the people,” he says, twisting his eyes to the ceiling. “Cuba,” when Billhardt so says, still resonates with the love he discovered at that time.

Despite open doors, he returned to the GDR

As he travels back from there, the airman stops in Canada. The doors are open. Billhardt knows this is the moment. At home the wall is built, now it can – still – continue. He does not go, does not want to betray his newly won friends in the Caribbean and his love for the communist sister state, he returns to the GDR. “After that, they knew I would always come home,” he says. The SED regime, so let him travel. And photograph, for the Association of Journalists of the GDR, for example.