Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt’s photographs have a rigorous construction, a perfectly controlled technique. We can really sense his rock solid experience . He does not call in new technology, does not have multiple focuses.He does not concede to the tyranny of medium format. Does not jump from one style to another. He tells his Leica what he has to do, not the other way round. The choices are definitive. The photographs are black and white. The form is very present. Classic structure. He also manages the laboratory, because it’s in the dark room that the images are revealed, after all.
Let’s summarize. The sensitive photographic plate. It’s him. He knows how to measure out the developing bath. He is an artisan photographer who possesses a perfect mastery of his craft. Let’s talk now of serious things. His humor, for example. Humor is not a comic’s business. It’s a way of thinking.
A way to go through life, liberated from the weight we may have had in the depths of our pockets. An attempt to rise above the mass . To take a step back. To help others be able to withstand the world. That means, of course, that what we saw from the beginning was rather unbearable. The universe that Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt reveals to us is not cheerful. Though he doesn’t travel the world to show the world’s sorrows, though he avoids the fascination with war ,of drama and blood, we can surely see that he does not consort with the privileged world…
But I’ll stop myself. You are going to think that I am talking about one of these preachers who brandish their photos like a demonstration and bring us back, distraught and guilty, to our powerlessness to suddenly change the direction of history. Nothing of the like with Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt. He talks to us about us. About our children, our days, our solitude, our bursts of joy, our fatigue, lurking death, the curious way the world turns. He talks about light, which strangely carves our shadows onto the world’s absurdities…
The form firmly states the subject. He recounts in photos, with such an exemplary economy of means, what a long speech would not manage to say. He shows us a world that is not exactly square, offering us a personal geometry.
There is so much humanity in these images that we leave consoled. We smile, we have fun, we no longer know where we are. In the end where are we? Sometimes the scene happens in Belgium, since Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt is Belgian, but it could just as well be happening on the island of Mauritius, in France, Portugal, New York, Martinique, or Japan. It’s all the same. The intent is not documentary, it’s universal.
We have never asked ourselves where La Fontaine’s fables occurred. It’s still about morality. His images offer us a story, but they never impose a conclusion. We are asked to bring our imaginations, our memories, our own dreams.
Francine Deroudille
Francine Deroudille is an author specialized in photography and daughter of photographer Robert Doisneau. This text is an excerpt from Photo Poche n°110 Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt, Actes Suds editions.
Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt
From January 20 through February 18, 2017
Galerie Camera Obscura
268 Boulevard Raspail
75014 Paris
France
