Thomas Barbčy was born in Connecticut in 1957, and
was taken to Europe by his parents when he was six
months old. After Italy and Germany, came Switzerland
where he lived for 17 years. All his schooling was in
French. He left the University of Geneva after one
semester to pursue a career in the music business.
After entering the Italian music charts, he moved to
Italy and stayed there for 15 years. He successfully
pursued the music business to pay for all his bills and
kept photography as an expensive hobby. He then
owned a full blown photographic studio for Fashion
photography in the early 90s and finally moved back to
America in 95. Today he lives and teamed up with his
wife Suzanne who is also a photographer in Southern
California where they work on black and white
surrealistic images that they like to call "photomixage".
Thomas Barbčy Artworks, L.L.P. was formed in 1999
by Thomas Barbčy and his wife Suzanne Barbčy, a
former model who decided to venture on the other
side of the camera. Our inspirations for our work
come from many years of traveling all over the world,
everyday life and from some of our favorite artists,
such as René Magritte, M.C. Escher or Roger Dean.
We bring our Mamiya RB 67 or several old Canon AE-
1s wherever we go to shoot our photographs. The
process of the montage starts with concept. It is then
followed by the exposure and selection of the
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. We
finish off the process by touching it up on the
computer at the very end. The pictures can be
appreciated without knowledge of their technical
virtuosity. Photographers run deep in our family. Now
and then we will take old negatives out of the family
archives and use them in our work. We hope you
appreciate them as much as we do.
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