“I’ve been a photographer since I was 10 years old and haven’t had a job without a camera since I was 17.”
Thomas Buster Farr was born in Chicago on February 18th 1953 into a family with two sisters. He moved to Tampa Florida when he was four and did not see snow again until he was eighteen. By the time, he was eight, he had two more adopted sisters and was the youngest child. He found that having four big sisters gave him a good perspective on life.
When he was 17 years old, he went to Vietnam as a photographer for the United States Air Force. He was shot once and shot down in a helicopter once, which left him with a collection of broken bones; he is a collector. To date he has broken 50 bones. He always said he is in the hospital a lot, but, never sick, only broken. He was angry with the government for Vietnam, so after he got out of the Air Force, he moved to Singapore instead of going back to America.
He came to Berlin on a two-week vacation in June of 1976. However, the second day he was in Berlin, he already knew that Berlin was where he fit in and wanted to be. He called his boss that day and told him to ship his things, because he was staying here. It was the first place he had been to where he felt at home and could breathe. He knew he could fit in without changing anything. Where he grew up, he always felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.
He worked the first 15 years in Berlin as a photographer for the Investigative services of the allied government; the best part of the job was the opportunity to fly the entire Wall in a Huey with the doors open every week. He took every chance to see the city from the air and to make photos. After the Allies, he spent fifteen years with the homicide division of the Criminal Police. After the homicide division, he spent five years at the German Heart Center, photographing heart surgery every day. For the last ten years, he has been in the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin at Klinikum Benjamin Franklin in Steglitz, doing various surgery and patient photography. Until today, Tom still lives in Berlin, together with his wife and the two youngest of his five children.
