Klaus Thymann
Klaus Thymann is a Danish explorer, scientist, fellow at The Explorers Club, fellow at the Royal Geographical Society, photographer, filmmaker and creator. He has developed an original viewpoint utilising a cross-disciplinary skillset that combines journalism, image making, mapping, documentary and exploration with a focus on contemporary issues and the climate emergency. Thymann has been featured by BBC, National Geographic, The Guardian, New Scientist and many other distinguished media outlets. He was awarded with the Sony World Photography Award in 2013 and was the youngest winner of the Scandinavian Kodak Gold Award in 1996. He is on the Expert Roster at UNESCO – UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Early life, education
Thymann was born in 1974 in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1988, at the age of fourteen, he began working as a photographer, photographing tourists for the Canal Tours. For the next few years, he also worked as a photographer and writer for several Danish publications. He attended Marie Kruses Skole in Farum, Denmark where he graduated in 1993. In 1996, Thymann was the recipient of the Scandinavian Kodak Gold Award. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental studies from The Open University in 2015.Early career
In Thymann's early career he photographed musicians and made music videos, he worked with Kashimir and photographed David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Coldplay, Green Day, David Bowie, Linkin Park, The Kills, Prodigy, The Cardigans, Suede, Elvis Costello and Robyn amongst many more.In collaboration with the Danish alternative rock band Kashmir, he created the music video of the song "Mom in Love & Daddy in Space”. He was awarded with the 2000 Danish Music Awards in the Danish Music Video of the Year category for the video and the video was nominated for a MTV award.
Career
Thymann has a degree in environmental science. Through leading teams and working collaboratively, Thymann has partnered with institutions including NASA, the United Nations, World Glacier Monitoring Service and Danish Technical University – conceiving new methodologies and creating inventions along the way. In 2020, Thymann discovered an abundance of corals in Jammer Bay, Denmark —a find that led him to spearhead a ground-breaking habitat mapping project with the Danish Technical University, in partnership with the local fishing community, funded by a €500,000 grant he secured from the Velux Foundation. He has conducted the only scuba dive of the world's clearest lake in New Zealand and made several discoveries as he conducts exploration with a scientific purpose.As a journalist, Thymann has conducted original reporting for BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, the New York Times, The Guardian, Vice and many others while working from conflict zones, jungles, remote mountains, glaciers, and the oceans. Thymann began working in journalism as a teenager. In 1997 he co-founded a Danish magazine, Virus, a biannual publication with in-depth features. The magazine was first to publish a feature on ECHELON, a surveillance program operated by the United States. The feature opened up the way for an investigation by a committee of the European Parliament during 2000 and 2001 with a report published in 2001. From 2000, he started working internationally and undertook diverse assignments include reporting and photographing for the New York Times in Gaza and Tonga, conducting expeditions in Uganda and Congo DRC for the BBC, and decades of environmental reporting for The Guardian.
As an explorer, he has led more than 50 purpose-driven expeditions to extreme environments across six continents and into four of the planet's oceans. He is a fellow at The Explorers Club of New York, a designation he earned through his significant discoveries, including finding corals in Danish waters, prehistoric human bones deep inside a submerged Mexican cave system, and an unexplored manatee habitat in the Yucatán. He has revealed equatorial glaciers by trekking a new route into Congo DRC and reported unnamed glaciers in Nepal. He has conducted the only scuba dive of the world's clearest lake in New Zealand, documented tourism in Iraq, parkour in Gaza, the relocation of the Arctic town Kiruna In Sweden and explored the glaciers of Uganda and Congo via new trekking routes. He is comfortable confronting the limits of the human body, both as a climber summiting oxygen-deprived peaks above 6300m and as a technical diver capable of navigating in deep waters, below ice, and in narrow flooded caves. His scientific and exploration work has been featured by New Scientist, National Geographic, Wired, Red Bull and more.
As a filmmaker, Thymann has reached audiences of tens of millions through commissions from premium media outlets. For CNN, he travelled deep into Brazil's Amazon, past the frontier of deforestation, to show the conflict between an indigenous community and land grabbing ranchers. In the Bikini Atolls for CNN, he dived atomic wrecks and walked on the still-toxic island to tell the story of America's nuclear legacy. He has revealed the impact of mining in the Arctic through the story of long-time residents and Sami reindeer herders. For The Guardian he entered a never explored glacier cave. Thymann's work in Mexico has taken him cave diving beneath illegal construction sites in the jungle and up close with cartels haunting the streets of Tulum for Vice and New Scientist featuring his manatee habitat discovery.
As an artist, his artworks have been exhibited at Designmuseum Denmark, Horniman Museum London, Institute of Contemporary Art London, Natural History Museum Vienna, Museum of Climate Change Hong Kong and Moderna Museet Stockholm.
Thymann has guest lectured at Oxford University, University of St Andrews, The Photographers' Gallery, Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design, Hong Kong University, Rome University, Cancun University, University of the Arts London, Natural History Museum Vienna. He is a Hasselblad Ambassador and has served on the board of organizations such The Design and Artists Copyright Society, UNICEF, Extinction Rebellion and Red Cross. His charitable work has been supported by the Queen of Denmark, Arts Council England, Danish Arts Foundation and Swiss Environmental Ministry.
In 2008, he establish the charity Project Pressure an ecological and climate-focused charity with over 15 years of experience in instigating, conceptualizing, and leading ambitious change-driven projects with an emphasis on field-building. Through Project Pressure he collaborates with world-renowned artists to create and exhibit provocative work that inspires climate action. Materials from these projects have been used by activists and policymakers to support their ongoing work.