Tom Fecht launched his artistic career in 1992 at Jan Hoet’s Documenta IX. In the late 1990s, he embraced photography as his preferred medium. He has since produced an extensive body of landscape and portrait work. In recent years, Fecht has became known for his innovative night photography and monochrome seascapes that focus on natural phenomena hidden in time and invisible to the naked eye. His large-scale minimalist works hover between the physical world and the invisible aspects of the universe – magically transforming nature through the profound depths of time. His most recent series DARK MATTERs push his photographic adventures to the edge of quantum physics. 

Inspired by the Apollo moon missions and Kubrick’s iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Fecht studied cybernetics, thermodynamics and engineering at Columbia University in New York and art history at Technische Universität in Berlin. As a young engineer, Fecht was involved in developing fax machines and computer-based imaging at IBM. In the 1970s, he founded his own gallery and publishing company Elefanten Press in Berlin. Over the next two decades, Fecht worked as a gallerist, publisher, author and editor focusing on historic, artistic and documentary photography. Expanding his imagination into engineering and scientific imaging reshaped his artistic practice; today he builds his own image machines testing the limits of lens-based media as a tool and toy. Fecht holds own patents and has taught at Cornell University, NY, at the Royal College of Art and the Imperial College in London. His current research explores the thermodynamic potential of silver gelatines in collaboration with CNRS Bordeaux.

As of 2012, Fecht’s works have been limited to unique vintage prints. His work is regularly presented at TEFAF Maastricht and New York and has been featured in museum exhibitions and collections, including the Neue Nationalgalerie and Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin; Hamburger Kunsthalle; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn; Royal College of Art, London; Helmhaus Zürich; Museum DKM, Duisburg; Museum Folkwang Essen; MuCEM Marseille; Musée des Beaux-Arts LAAC, Dunkerque and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Liège. His work is also represented in both corporate and private collections across Europe, North America, and Asia. 

Tom Fecht was born in Germany and lives in Berlin and Brittany (France), his work is centered around his studio at the Atlantic coast.