Belgian photographer Vincent Delbrouck (b. 1975) visited the Himalayan region several times between 2009 and 2015. In 2010, he spent a year in Kathmandu with his family. He let himself be guided by the energy of the location. Nature pervades his work and visual language. His work is a poetic succession of little things whose diversity Delbrouck embraces with passion.
What’s the story behind this work?
I think it came to me naturally. We went to visit my brother-in-law, who lived in Kathmandu, teaching classes in classical Tibetan in a Buddhist monastery. We liked the energy of the place, and my wife and I decided to take our son to live there for a year. My work was born from the total experience of a place rather than a single idea. This life experience is accompanied by desire and an imagination that haunted me over a long time and brought me to where I wanted to be in my work, spontaneously creating a creative space. It’s something I experienced in different parts of my body, and which can take on multiple and contradictory forms, between image and writing, a meditative body experience and a bunch of thoughts. It’s something a little bizarre that resembles life more than a conceptual idea or a documentary. There’s something very poetic about it, too.
What’s your relationship to reality? Do you show reality as it is, like in the teachings of Dzogchen?
I like this question. It touches on the ambiguity of art. What’s the nature of reality and its positive and negative illusions? How can we escape only to return to the center of the present moment? It’s all quite simple and complex at the same time. We experience it, but it’s hard to describe in words. Life interests me for its sensuality, its fluidity, its passion, its silences, and that’s what I try to capture in my photographs. I try not to create a hierarchy among objects, people, animals and plants. A thought central to Dzogchen teachings is that everything is already, in its own way, perfect. […] The little things and objects from everyday life fascinate me in the warm light of the Tropics and the Himalayas. They are charged with an immanent mystery. Reality becomes less brutal, more supple, and a source of curiosity.
EXHIBITION
FoMu – FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerpen
Waalsekaai 47 – 2000 Antwerpen
Through 1st February 2015
