The photographer and former creative director studied communication design at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences and then lived in New York City for a number of years. Karsten Thormaehlen photographs, edits and curates with passion. For his sensitive, multi-award-winning series of portraits, he visited old and very old people all over the world and focuses on socio-cultural phenomena of aging societies in order, as he says, to question our mostly negative image of old age. His work has already been exhibited in Berlin, London, Munich, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna and Zurich and has been published in numerous illustrated books.
The SILVER HEROES series, which shows mature athletes, was nominated for the German Age Award in 2013 and inspired the World Health Organization (WHO) to launch the first global campaign against age discrimination.