Nomi Baumgartl (born 1950) is a German photographer, known for her work in fashion and portrait photography in the 1980s and 1990s.
Nomi Baumgartl (born 1950) is a German photographer, known for her work in fashion and portrait photography in the 1980s and 1990s.
Since the 2000s, Nomi Baumgartl has dedicated herself to her own photographic art projects, which deal with the connection between humans, animals and nature.
She began her career as a photographer at the age of 21. Her debut work “Gesellschaft 1972”, a series of portraits of Turkish migrants in Düsseldorf, won first prize in a competition at Photokina in Cologne. She studied visual communication in Düsseldorf and specialized in classic analogue photography. Her initial focus was on photojournalism, with publications in Geo, Stern, Time and Life. Her most notable works from this period include portraits of personalities such as Arthur Rubinstein, Joseph Beuys and Jane Goodall.
In the early 1990s, Baumgartl gained recognition in the fashion world by photographing productions for international designers with supermodels. Magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue featured her work. During this time she lived mainly in New York.
In 1996, Baumgartl suffered a car accident in which she lost her long-term memory and suffered paralysis of her eye muscles. Despite extensive rehabilitation, she struggled to return to her former studio work. A dolphin therapy session with John Lilly in Hawaii contributed to her recovery, although she had to relearn how to see and photograph. She began capturing images of eyes, both human and animal, under the motto “Art of Seeing”.
Baumgartl works primarily with analog photography, as she has a fondness for its ability to convey the desired results. She describes photography as a form of consciousness-raising, with her images being “realized visions” that emphasize the importance of nature – a tribute to creation.
Her works are housed in various institutions, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Berlin gallery Camera Work. Baumgartl has lived and worked as a freelance photographer in Murnau am Staffelsee since 2017.
Photographic art projects:
– Between 2000 and 2001, she photographed dolphins underwater near the Bahamas, in collaboration with Tatjana Patitz, in support of the organization Dolphin Aid.
– In 2003, she traveled to California to portray Chris Gallucci, who had formed a unique bond with an African elephant after a life crisis, which was captured in a photo book.
– Since 2009, she has been documenting the melting of ice in the Arctic and the Alps. Her project “Stella Polaris* Ulloriarsuaq – The Earth’s Shining Memory” aimed to draw attention to climate change through long-term exposures of melting ice. The project involved collaboration with other photographers and Inuit participants.
– In 2016, she initiated the “Eagle Wings” project in collaboration with the Earth Observation Center and the Schneefernerhaus Environmental Research Station to document the effects of climate change on alpine glaciers through a unique perspective, including footage from a camera mounted on the back of an eagle.
