THOMAS DELLERT | LGBTQ Revolution In the Light of the Night

THOMAS DELLERT | also known as Tommy Dollar (a name given to him by Andy Warhol) Photographer, Singer & Songwriter, Director, Actor, Poet, Painter, Film Maker, Fashion Designer, Cabaret Performer, Vintage Crooner, X-Punk Rocker.

“Every man has the right to risk his life in order to save it.”
-Thomas Dellert

My portraits about life and death include some from my years as a photographer for Torture Garden Fetish Club in London.
They show a colorful kaleidoscope of seemingly ordinary people who, like CIN-derella or Dracula, are being TRANS-formed at the stroke of midnight to become their own “Fetish Fantasy Creatures of the Night.”

“The one who can catch the day, before the dawn, will still keep the light through the darkness we all are facing.”
-Thomas Dellert

Thomas Dellert has had over 100 International exhibitions in museums and galleries during the last 40 years. His work has been featured in many international art photography magazine covers and extensive reportage, like in EyeMazing Magazine, Photo Icon, and Now in 2021 in Lens Magazine. He is represented in collections like The Absolut Vodka Collection, The Heinz collection, the Swedish Royal family Collection, and several museums, like the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. In addition, he has been the official artist for both Absolut Vodka and Mercedes Benz.
Photo Magazine Scandinavia did the biggest single reportage in the magazine’s history since its start, when on 11 pages, they showed 48 pictures of Dellert- Dellacroix & Dellfina.
As a contemporary, provocative art photographer, he was then working under the name of Dellacroix in symbiosis with former wife and partner Agnieszka Dellert-Dellfina between 2000 to 2008 when they divorced and went separate ways.
He has also collaborated with photographer Ellen von Unwerth, Bruno Ehrs, Raphael Yoshitomi, and Philipp Mueller.
He now lives and works with artist Vava Venezia since 2013.

Death and Fame is a central theme in Dellert’s works, and he uses irony and humor mixed with horror as one of his main tools. His work has a strong, humanistic approach, and he uses powerful images to show the horrors of war and genocide. After meeting Andy Warhol in 1976, he made a series of hand-printed silkscreens collaborating with his childhood friends Bruno Ehrs and Rainer Laakso. These art prints were presented to Warhol in his Factory in New York in 1980. A well-documented event. He then inspired Warhol with his camouflage prints that later became Warhol’s own art expression. The same happened with artist Jean Michel Basquiat who visited Dellert’s exhibit in New York in 1982. All paintings by Dellert were then framed with ropes larger than canvas in hand-built wood frames. After the exhibition, Thomas left all frames on the street outside the art gallery on St Marks Place, a few meters away from the home of Basquiat, Who then brought them home, and this new framing technique became his trademark. Art history in the making.

Read the full article in Lens Magazine Issue #83