BY DAVID MARLÉ
1. Vincent, you currently have two exhibitions in Belgium. Can you tell us what they are about? What are the subjects of these two shows and which quests are lying underneath?
Hello David. Yes, I have two exhibitions in Antwerp: one solo show (‘Dzogchen’) at the FotoMuseum and a two-person show with Max Pinckers at Stieglitz19 gallery (‘The Monk and the Palm Tree’). It is all about photography, of course, and mainly focused on the life and photographic experience I had in the Himalayas. Written like this it could be seen as a new “National Geographic pilgrimage” in the Everest, but it is far from that! I started this project in 2009 when I was living in Kathmandu with my wife and my son. We moved there for one year. I wrote a lot and took a lot of photos during that period of time and later, during trekkings in Ladakh, the Annapurna region, etc. I was maybe searching for peace there and my (inner) nature. I was certainly very curious about everything and I did explore with a strong empathy the city and the mountains in the area, traveling and walking—both physically and in my mind—through literature, along the roads, in the dust, in the wind, as a natural flow.
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘some windy trees - #1’
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘as dust alights’
Energy. I was deeply moved by a strong energy. Walking and writing. I wanted to make a new book, finalizing a trilogy: ‘As Dust Alights’ (sold out rapidly), ‘Some Windy Trees’, and the last one, ‘Dzogchen’ (coming this summer). In this show I mix different kinds of images, as usual, some texts, objects, books I love. It is for me like a living matter with no hierarchy between the different elements, and I try to invite the public to touch a piece of poetry inside common and magical still lifes, landscapes, and portraits. All connected, all the same, no category, no perfect and damaged, nothing about judging or having preconceived ideas and gentle exoticism. With joy and pain.
Drips, animals, rocks, plants, ponytails…. There is also something sacred in this show, a simple spiritual journey inside the colors of my brain…. Something crazy like that. Yeah! The show at the gallery includes images from the same series and also new images from a work in progress made in Cuba, where I came back after nine long years with my first book, made in Havana: ‘Beyond History’. This is more luminous and less nervous than before, maybe, and not so intimate; with just one place or one neighborhood, family, strange relationships, etc. It is more related to a humble maturity, Cuban poetry, (spring) light, old history, countryside, etc. I will try to have a book next year and will be traveling to Cuba again in March.
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘hablar en voz baja’
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘hablar en voz baja’
2. Which one of these two inventions is crucial to your practice: DSLR or tape ? Why?
DSLR = Digital single-lens reflex…. Wow, I had to check those four letters on the web to know what it meant exactly. I have used it only to shoot my books (especially when they are original, unique, copies as is the case with the ‘Revisited’ Cuban book) and keep a reproduction of those objects. Soooo … I guess tape is really the more useful and magic invention in the history of humanity. I can stick my images in crazy notebooks, with scribbles, bad painting, ecoline, texts, works on paper. I use it also on the wall as punctuations and for my new covers of the ‘Revisited’ Cuban book. It is a very sensual tool, and I like the sound when I cut it out with my hands and, well, this is something that is part of me now; I could never get divorced from my tape. But now I am just asking myself if the best invention is not the red marker to write on the books, on the wall, etc….
3. OK, If I summarize: You go far away, you shoot film, you walk, you read, you shoot, you write, you shoot, you draw, you shoot. So you must come back with a shit lot of raw material. How do you proceed to build a book or an exhibition?
With time…. As always, a ton of ideas are coming after the experience of shooting and living in the area of my dreams, and then it is like if I wanted to come back to the starting point of a magic trip where I saw a light, a complete image of something, in a “beginning-dream”. There is always a feeling there, at the birth of the project, (when? I don’t remember exactly, maybe at the exact moment of the first confrontation with the place) some kind of intuition, and the challenge is maybe to get closer and closer to this intuition, back there, under the mud and layers of a long experience. I am just thinking now that all this process is very Buddhist in a way. The perfect nature is just there, has always been there, just here inside, and ordinary experience and mind is just the mud and dust that makes you blind. You don’t see it anymore, or rarely, but this perfect nature is there.
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘as dust alights’
Yes. It is the normal human condition. The point is: there is a forest of poems just there in each artistic project making my life exciting and luminous, and I try to expose them, to share them with others after a process of giving birth. But this is also a process of “editing” (I don’t like that word) … or “searching” also, maybe this word is better, just searching and searching and searching. Making different trips to the lab for the preparation of an exhibition, or having small prints at home to play with in a book, a special event, and spending my time writing again and editing some texts, and working on papers with tape, ink, images, painting. All raw. All stocked in folders and boxes.
Building also a new book (which has been there in my mind from the beginning of the project) with the prints I have at home in the sizes I already have, sticking the prints directly on the spreads of paper, working very fast, and not on the computer. But also taking time to prepare exhibitions on the computer and improvising during the installation with all the images I have from the lab. Leaving a part of the prints in the boxes, sleeping. Wasted images that will be used in further exhibitions. All is reused in my work, revisited (like my Cuban book ‘Beyond History’).
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘hablar en voz baja’
4. The practical question: are you living off of your work? If not, how do you deal with daily needs?
I am a beggar…. No, more seriously, I have jobs in different companies or organizations (NGO): stamping letters, or working with young people with photo projects, or helping refugees to find jobs. I made some fashion photos and corporate pictures. I painted walls in houses. I had artist status, then I finally worked as a (photography) teacher at La Cambre (only workshops) and last year in Le 75 in Brussels. I loved being a teacher or a coach for the students. I hope to have the chance to work there again in the future. Crossing fingers. This is the perfect job for me. I love that energy. Now I also have a gallery in Antwerp: Stieglitz19 gallery, which is very good. Dries Roelens, the owner of the gallery, is like a father to me. And… I have been a shiatsu massage practitioner for 3 years. I learned shiatsu in Belgium and tuina massage in China, and craniosacral therapy in Kathmandu. I have always dreamed of being a doctor…
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘as dust alights’
5. Which advice would you give to a young—and fresh—photographer?
Work, work, and more work. Make it a religion, and take pleasure in photography, simple pleasure, facing the world, searching the good confrontation at your rhythm, the good balance between fiction and your reality, with fun and compassion, not to lose your precious mind. Stay humble, always keep the “beginner’s mind” as Shunryu Suzuki, the great Zen master used to say. Always experiment (with simple techniques) and don’t pretend to know anything before starting. Read, watch, be curious. Curiosity is the best thing in this world. Naivety inside lucidity. And don’t use too much digital camera ;).
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘as dust alights’
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘as dust alights’
© Vincent Delbrouck, from the series ‘as dust alights’
6. Is there a photographer you place on top of the others? Why?
That’s so hard to say…. I don’t have maybe anymore this kind of religious veneration for photographers but … I still certainly have it for painters like Marlene Dumas or Peter Doig. And for writers like Charles Bukowski, John Fante, Ken Kesey, Raymond Carver, Jim Harrison, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Gabriel García Márquez, Reinaldo Arenas…. Photographers on top of the top: Morten Andersen for his books, Wolfgang Tillmans for his vivid arborescences and his artist’s books, Robert Frank (of Mabou), and William Eggleston for being the roots, Lieko Shiga for having one of the more powerful books of the last years, Paul Graham for having always the right tone, Todd Hido for having the most erotic picture of my life, Susan Meiselas for being so pure and strong in her achievements, Stephen Gill for his experimental colorful pics and books, Jurgen Teller for Go-Sees, William Christenberry, Chris Shaw, Malick Sidibé, Eugene Richards, Viviane Sassen, Araki and Moriyama, Bertien van Manen, Raymond Meeks, and of course Gerard Fieret!