Vincen Beeckman, activist photographer

Posted: January 9, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Photobooks, Photography | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

You may already know that I am a fan of Belgian photography, but today, I would like to focus on one of them whose work I particularly love, I mean Vincen Beeckman.

The first time I have heard about him was years ago, when he was in charge of Recycl’Art, an art center which was located in the former train station of Bruxelles Chapelle. The center is now closed, but it was a wonderful place with exhibitions, workshops, happening and a very good restaurant.

In 2017, he started a touring exhibition of Belgian photographers in many small boxes which aim was to be representative of the Belgian photography scene, and called it first “Musée de la Photographie”. After a troubled period with a conflict with the already existing museum in Charleroi, the name turned to the “Fusée de la Motographie”.

During the time he worked at Recycl’Art, he took a lot of care and attention the people from minorities, like migrants, homeless, refugees.. and this is this strong empathy for the humankind that we find in all his published books.

Here below, you can find different books he made, from my own shelves.

Claude & Lilly, a true love story between the two characters shot by Vincen from 2015 to 2018. Published in March 2019 by APE in an edition of 500 copies.

Filip – Anneessens. One day, Vincen was given archives photographs from the time when the Father Philippe took in charge teenagers in the Bruxelles area of Anneessens. These photographs show the daily life of those teenagers, through their activities and also travels, like to Ostende, Paris or Spain. Published in December 2019 by Recycl’Art in an edition of 250 copies.

Le Petit Rempart is a small booklet of photographs from February 2019 to February 2020 made in the emergency shelter of “Le Petit Rempart”. With tenderness, we meet all those people who spent some time in the structure. Published by Camille Carbonaro in an edition of 100 copies.

Cracks is one of my absolute favorite. For this project, Vincen gave disposable cameras to homeless people in Bruxelles, more or less around the central Station, to witness their daily life. He then did the editing of the photographs and the book was published in 2019 by VOID in an edition of 250 copies with a specific particularity if you want a copy. The book was not available in bookstores, but only by a direct contact with the homeless people. You need to call them to organize an appointment to meet them and pay the book in cash. It creates a strange, but really true relationship.

Espinho, published in 2021 by Intimate structures, is a piece of work made in the fishing community of Espinho, a borough in the South of Porto. For this work, photography was, for Vincen, a way to communicate with people, as he does not speak Portugese and the local people don’t speak French nor English. From 2016, he returned time after time to finally staged an exhibition, glued on the wall of the borough. From his own word, this book is like a family album.

Les Eternels was published in 500 copies by Ciao Press, in 2021. The photographs were made in different nursing house of elderly people, in collaboration with “A travers les arts”, an association to promote the access to culture for elderly people. The book interweaves photos of the present daily life with archives photos or press clippings creating a very joyful mix.

Birds of a feather, OpStap, the last one in my collection, is a collaborative project between Vincen for the photos, Colin Pantall for the text and Lien Van Leemput for the design, published in 2021 by APE in an edition of 1000 copies. The book focus on the organization and functioning of OpStap, a structure which aim is to help people with drug addictions.

To conclude, I could nothing but recommend you to have a look at those books if you can put your hands on them. Words are powerless to describe the feelings you have when you let Vincen takes you by hand to guide you to meet all those fantastic people. And I must admit that in the ambient gloom, these books give me faith in the future of human beings.

Where are we now ? by Geert Van Den Eede

Posted: May 22, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Photobooks, Photography | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cape of Good Hope was first a photobook blog by David Nollet. It became an independent publishing house when David published his own book entitled « Façade Démocratique » in 2016. Two years later Cape of Good Hope offers us a new book whose poetry is reminiscent of the previous one.

Geert Van Den Eede is a Belgian photographer who brings us, throughout this book, in the Balkans. The photographs were taken from 2007 to 2015 in Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro. The title of the book refers, as much, to the state of this fragmented, disputed, broken territory, as to the photography itself and its own question of representation. Where are we now? of these borders, lines and continually changing patterns that have fueled all fantasies and generated so many dramas for centuries. Where are we now? of this ability to represent with the photography medium. In the foreword, Ognjen Lopušina compares these two statements with the Sisyphus ordeal, finally condemned to continually climb a rock at the top of the mountain without ever succeeding, so Where are we now?

Usually, I do not read the foreword of a book before seeing the pictures, I do not want to condition my perception by the considerations of another. Yet this time I did it, without really knowing why, so I already know a little what I’m going to find, especially since this text is a kind of caption of the photo on the cover: a structure of concrete terraces whose we do not know if it is a finished work, a work in progress, or a demolition site; a kind of perpetual movement which, like this country, never stops to reshape itself, to redraw itself, moving back and forward. So, actually, the photographic representation becomes a challenge. How by its immediacy could it show these turbulences, these movements, sometimes so subtle that a foreign eye would not succeed in discerning them.

So we turn the pages and move on to the book. Very quickly, we are touched by these ephemeral moments that get entangled. We walk with the photographer, we stop for a moment, then we resume the journey. We meet a few people, some suspicious, others distant and, everywhere, traces where an uncertain future stands alongside the tortured past. Geert Van Den Eede describes his work as a travelogue, a sort of wandering across the Balkans, with no purpose nor goal than to record everything that crosses his path, to try to understand this territory and its figures … and the form is successful. The layout is sober and a certain poetry emerges from these places that are not at first very attractive. They become touching or even fragile, even if they are embedded in concrete structures. Each image is rich and the frame filled. We stop and the drama begins, the actors are in place, the acts follow each other and are not alike, or maybe they are, since we read harmonics that hold the piece all along, which gives it its coherence. Each of these bits of history would be a pretext for a novel, point of departure or arrival of a story that would be built in the background.

Concrete is very present throughout the book, it give rythm to the sequences and punctuates the spaces, both public and private. It is subject, becomes scenery, sometimes disappears in rural areas to reappear further. It is the leitmotif of this country, a promise of a modernity to come which is already fading by turning to new futures, like this cosmonaut with the colors of America and its neoliberalism devastating trend. There remains, however, a certain grace in these modernist abstractions, but perhaps it is the same kind of grace that can be found in the photographs « underexposed on an expired 3200 ASA film from a forgotten East German stock », to quote Ognjen Lopušina.

So, I really do not know Where are we now? but with a certain humility, I got to know this country better now, and that’s not bad! Thanks to Geert Van Den Eede and Cape of Good Hope.

Softcover book published by Cape of Good Hope in 2018. 24 x 30 cm, 56 pages and 31 B&W photos. Essay by Ognjen Lopušina

More info : http://www.cape.ag/

And : http://www.geertvandeneede.be/where-are-we-now/

The link for my previous review of Façade démocratique : https://whoneedsanotherphotoblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/facade-democratique-by-david-nollet/