Thomas Rusch


Thomas Rusch is a German photographer living in Berlin, Hamburg and Paris.

Life and work

After finishing school, Thomas Rusch moved to Hamburg in 1981 to start his education as photographer. His first publication was a series of portraits at Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival published in weekly magazine Stern. This was followed by a long-term cooperation with Stern, in which Thomas Rusch published many reportages, portraits and cover pictures. At the end of the 1990s Thomas Rusch's portraits of well-known celebrities were published in magazines like Zeitmagazin, Der Spiegel, Max and GQ. At the same time, Rusch showed his artistical work, e.g. Paradise Lost, Cirque O, and Die Ecke, in price-winning exhibitions around the world.
From the late 1990s on, Thomas Rusch lived in Paris. He worked as a beauty- and fashion photographer and published his work in indie publications like Soon, Tank, and Oyster, as well as in numerous international fashion- and lifestyle magazines. Rusch shot campaigns and developed his own artistical projects.
Since 2006, Thomas Rusch is commuting between Paris, Hamburg and Berlin. He is still working for editorials and advertising, but at the same time he is focussing on his work as an artist. In his freelanced projects, Thomas Rusch is concerned with the subjects of sexuality, representation of women in western society, and fetishism. He likes to examine their ambivalent qualities between the private and the public, art and commerce - oscillating between a clear emphasis on naturalness and an exaggeration of superficiality. His last exhibitions were focussing on themes like masks and skin

Exhibitions