CV / EXHIBITION

Ralf Tooten
– Biodata

Fascinated by the aesthetics of visual encounters, the personal radiance of human beings and great architecture of all centuries, photographer Ralf Tooten has dedicated his professional life to architecture & portrait photography. 

Born in Germany’s Rhineland, Tooten completed his apprenticeship in architectural photography with master photographer Clemens Hartzenbusch in 1978 and then worked as a stills photographer on several seminal German movies including Volker Schlöndorff’s Academy Award winning ‘The Tin Drum’, based on the novel by Günter Grass, and Margarethe von Trotta’s ‘Two German Sisters’, which won the Golden Lion.

After winning the Fifth Polaroid Fine Arts Award in London for his documentation of Artist Gustav Kluge at work, Tooten went on to work for numerous organizations, ad agencies and magazines across Europe. His first coffee table book ‘Eyes of Wisdom’, an intimate portrait collection of the world’s greatest religious leaders, received worldwide attention and bagged the distinguished Hasselblad Master Award in Goteborg, Sweden in 2002.

In 2003, Tooten moved this studio to Bangkok and began photographing the Thai capital at night. His collaboration with acclaimed writer Roger Willemsen resulted in the best-selling book Bangkok Noir, published in 2009.

His 2009-2010 Medical awareness campaign about people who suffer emotionally from living with psoriasis, initiated by Pfizer Inc. and photographed on the Canary Islands, in Spain and in Costa Rica, was exhibited throughout Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America. 

Enthralled by the exotic aesthetics of the Asian megalopolis, Tooten has spent years documenting the city’s after-dark activities, which he published in the 2009 book, Bangkok Noir. Now with the support of the Goethe Institute and under the curatorial guidance of former Ver Gallery director Josef Ng, Tooten has transferred his shadowy diary into an atmospheric multimedia exhibition at the National Gallery.

In 2013, Tooten’s installation R.C.A., series of gigantic portraits of Thai construction  workers in numerous public spaces around Ratchaburi, transforming this small town in central Thailand into an open air gallery. 

His more recent collection, Ocean Noir, a series of ultra-low light images of oceans around the world, was first exhibited in Bangkok in 2016. 

In 2018, Ralf Tooten was selected as one of the Artists for the first Bangkok Art Biennale by Artistic Director Prof. Dr. Apinan Poshyananda and this curator team, to display and screen this Worker Portrait photographs all over multiple locations within Bangkok for four month.

–

Solo Exhibitions

2018 / 2019

Selected Artist for Bangkok Art Biennale 2018/19, Bangkok, Thailand

( art work on display mounted on buildings, run on screens and displayed in gallery space at multiple locations in Bangkok )

2017 

Worker Portraits new collection – Cho Why Gallery, Bangkok

2016

Night Wave, RMA Institute, Bangkok, Thailand 

2013 

R.C.A. Ratchaburi Construction Workers Open Air, Ratchaburi, Thailand

2011 

Bangkok Noir – National Gallery ( & Goethe Institute ), Bangkok, Thailand 2010

Naked Truth – Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Naked Truth – Caracas, Venezuela

Naked Truth – San Paulo, Brazil

2009 

A.W.C. – Goethe-Institute Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand

Naked Truth – Amsterdam Rai + Warf, Amsterdam, Netherlands 

Naked Truth – Pascal Vanhoecke Gallery, Paris, France

Bangkok Noir – Flo Peters Gallery, Hamburg, Germany 

Bangkok Noir – Galerie Reygers, Muinch, Germany

Naked Truth – Museo Nazionale della Scienza, Milano, Italia

2008 

E.o.W. Galerie Ulrike Petschelt, Kassel, Germany

A.W.C. – Tang Contemporary Art Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand

2006 

FCCT, Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand 

2005 

St.Johnnis Church, Hamburg, Germany

2004 

E.o.W. The National Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand

E.o.W. Culture-Center Church Lutterbuche, Hamburg, Germany 

E.o.W. RWE Systems / Art Forum, Essen, Germany

E.o.W. Goethe-Institute Hanoi, Hanoi, Vietnam

E.o.W. Photography-Gallery Multimedia, Zingst, Germany 

E.o.W. National Gallery of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 

E.o.W. Museum Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

E.o.W. Oriega Center, Makati, Philippines

E.o.W. Davao Center, Mindanao, Philippines

2003 

E.o.W. Reygers, Gallery for Photography, Munich, Germany

E.o.W. Ecumenical Church Berlin, Germany 

E.o.W. Cultural Center Constance, Constance, Germany

2002 

E.o.W. Photokina, World Trade Fair of Photography, Cologne, Germany

E.o.W. Museum of Art and Commerce, Hamburg, Germany