Meanwhile in Antwerp — Interview with Nick Geboers

What is your relationship to the medium photography?

There are three things that instantly come to mind: The medium of photography allows for an almost infinite number of techniques and combinations of its different parameters. It can be a very simple tool to make an image. It can also be made into a very complicated piece of wizardry, a black box that creates beauty by accident, in ways we can’t fully comprehend nor describe properly.
 Besides the technical aspect, photography is known to have the ability to create time capsules. It is the fossil making machine I dreamed of as a kid. When I was little I was sure I would become an archaeologist, like many other kids of the Jurassic Park generation. Then I was lucky enough to grow a bit older and I wanted to become a writer and movie director… Which brings me to third aspect of photography that makes it interesting to me and that is the narrative capability or incapability of the medium. Photography is maybe not so suited for truthful storytelling, but that is where it gets interesting: Its power to suggest truth. In connecting photographs there is room in between images to be playful, to suggest something to the viewer. It’s a form of poetry or prose in which I can translate some deeper feelings… which I have trouble with bringing to words… Something I clearly struggle with as you might notice here.

 

 

What role does publishing play in your artistic practice and in particular in your work Camouflage Studies?

Publishing is also part of what I describe above as the infinite number of possibilities to combine different parameters and techniques. It offers room for experiment and is an honest and humble way to share work. Camouflage Studies for example is the result of experimenting and bringing together techniques that weren’t necessarily meant to be used together.

 

 

It started with finding this weirdly beautiful black and white negative of chameleons, animals known for their ability to change color. The photographic paper the print was made on was initially developed to give very bright colors to the images that were printed on it. The characteristics of this paper seemed to be a good way to give back the chameleonic impulse of the image’s subject.

 

What are you working on at the moment?

Normally I would be preparing for a trip to Denmark to make images for a new publication. The plan is to document a cultural heritage site in South Jutland, which is not well known but is a clear example of visual imagination of people who were isolated. It is in some way an extension of my book AÆUÅÆØ which dwells on the outsider feeling of being isolated, of being on an island…

 

To get a closer view inside Nick Geboers’ work just visit his website under www.nickgeboers.com

 

malenki.net features the following publications by Nick Geboers