GEERT GOIRIS: “RESONANCE”
Geert Goiris’ photography investigates the notion of wilderness as a cultural construction. We talk with the belgian photographer about his ongoing book-project Resonance. «I seek out places where human presence has a efemeral and fleeting aspect: the landscape as a transient place. In many of these places time itself is no longer measured out on an anthropomorphical scale, but moves on with an invisible - immensly slow – pace, a geological instead of a human timeframe». Sometimes the inaccessability of the site itself plays an important role, «the romantic notion of exploration, the sensation of seeing something for the first time, not only as an individual, but also as a society is a tremendous inspiration. And I like to use the camera’s to record this unique encounter».
There’s a reason for choosing extreme places: «I want to show wilderness, the world without us, without humanity, just land and terrain unfit to sustain human beings. Being in hostile surroundings shows how much is at stake. There is an obviously an ecogical position behind this, but I hope it is not limited to that alone. In fact, I find that so called frontier territory is very revealing. The values and rules of organisation we tend to live by, the essence of society is very present in some of these places». An outsider by choice, mapping the outskirts of the known world, looking at the everyday as if it takes on a new appearance. «My images are marked by a double movement of distance and seduction. Distance because there is always space between the photographer and the depicted (a kind of ‘cold’ eye), but at the same time the rich texture, full of details is seducing the viewer to get closer». Closer to a world that doesn’t need humans, as a perfect, selfcontained system, governed by rules of its own.