9th International Biennial Of Photography And Visual Arts - Liège
Presented at Maison Renaissance de l’Emulation and the adjacent Cercle des Beaux-Arts, the exhibition Vues de l’Esprit is a project by the asbl Les Brasseurs – Art Contemporain (Curators : Emmanuel d’Autreppe, Dominique Mathieu, Yannick Franck).
Since its inception, photography has been the tool par excellence, for retranscribing reality – or at least for transcribing the visible. Photography has always maintained a fascination and even obvious affinities with that which eludes it: the invisible. From the start, photography has swung between two poles which are ultimately less contradictory than they are complementary: positivism and certain forms, sometimes elaborate, of “magical thought”. Seeing better, seeing “between”, seeing further, closer, through or beyond: photography’s thirst to see was unquenchable, and in sixty years of existence (1840-1900), it was constantly accompanied by new uses, technical improvements and unique beliefs. The late nineteenth century sought to capture auras and fluids, waves and thoughts, borderlines, the paranormal and mental images.
Riding on the naïve and worldly success of spiritualism and occultism, spiritualist photography benefits from coincidences and unexpected technical hitches to maintain allegedly privileged relationships with the hereafter by showing ghosts, raising souls, and lighting up shadows…
Many contemporary works continue to focus on the invisible – a constant border to photography – whether they refer explicitly to historical essays on the subject or not. The same applies to the dark, yet also the positive, beliefs that are perpetuated within photography and the ability of the image to connect with the human soul or with the mysteries of psychic magnetism, be it via digital or film photography.
It is therefore a question of perceiving photography also – and perhaps above all – as a mental image, the visual expression of a form of thought and the unveiling of the world beyond its “simple” appearances. Photography is a privileged instrument of introspection or reverie, a place where the blurred outlines of the imaginary and poetry, separating the rational from the irrational and illusion from hallucination, are constantly being repelled.