Thomas Barbey
Feb 13 2013 ·
Thomas Barbèy was born in Greenwich, Connecticut and spent his childhood in Geneva, Switzerland. He began drawing seriously at an early age, using black “encre de Chine” and gouaches for color. Some early influences for his surrealistic images have been Philippe Druillet, Roger Dean, René Magritte, M.C. Escher and H.R. Giger. He has been interviewed and featured on the cover of “Inked” Magazine and featured in the New Britain Herald. Barbèy lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and travels 2-3 times for inspiration as he continues to capture new fantasies with his lens.
For many artists, photoshop and graphic editing has become a shortcut in contemporary photography. Thomas Barbèy has chosen the road less traveled. His process is a personal and intricate labyrinth resulting in compositions best described as impressively surreal. Each negative is selected after years, and sometimes decades of storage, and then matched with other negatives to meet an unimaginable transmogrification. “The process of my montage starts with concept. It is then followed by the exposure and selection of negatives. The design is then created by carefully choosing printing procedures as combination printing: sandwiching negatives together, thereby printing them simultaneously; pre-planned double exposure in the camera; the re-photographing of collaged photographs; and/or a combination of the above.”
