The work of photographer Demand achieves a disquieting balance between the real and the artificial. Born in 1964, Demand began as a sculptor and took up photography to record ephemeral paper constructions that he destroys after developing the film. Like a number of famous German photographers including Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, Demand was trained at the art academy in Duesseldorf before going on to study at London’s Goldsmith College, the hotbed of the British art scene at the time. Today, Thomas Demand lives and works in Berlin.

In 1993 he shifted his focus completely to photography, henceforth making constructions for the sole purpose of photographing them. Demand begins with a pre-existing image culled from the media, usually of a political event, which he translates into a life-size model made of colored paper and cardboard. His handcrafted facsimiles of architectural spaces and natural environments are built in the image of other images. Thus, his photographs are triply removed from the scenes or objects they purport to depict. Once they have been photographed, the models are destroyed.

Demand recently began making 35mm films, setting his cinematic still images in motion. Combining craftsmanship and conceptualism in equal parts, Demand pushes the medium of photography toward uncharted frontiers. His originality has won him recognition as one of the most innovative artists of his generation.

The exhibition at MoMA features 25 large-scale photographs made between 1993 and 2005, and the U.S. premiere of Demand’s most recent film Trick (2004). Organized by Roxana Marcoci, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography, the exhibition is presented in the Special Exhibitions Gallery and will be on show until May 30, 2005.