Finally the work of the Belgian photographer Paul D'Haese finds an arrangement in the book 'Winks of Tangency' recently published by Stockmans.

We rediscover pictures from the trailblazer 'Escapades' series (2013) and 'Belgopolis' (2016) which both marked his research on the Belgian periurban landscape. There are 133 places collected as ingredients of an imaginary distillate, a sort of formal and architectural bestiary. The landscape portrayed fits easily into the definition of “non-place” or those familiar spaces that we usually pass through without giving them particular importance: parking, abandoned spaces, roundabouts. In addition we also see the symbolic elements that make up the dictionary of contemporary living: fences, traffic lights, walls, street lamps, hedges, railings, corners and sections of buildings.

Buildings are described with a careful compositional rigor suitable to enhance, even aesthetically, silence as an endless dimension. Man has disappeared, and this void produces a metaphysical aftertaste accentuated by mute facades. Spaces reflect the echo of a calculating and instrumental reason that, however, seems in contradiction with itself. Places without humanity are meaningless. Like the photographs by ‘Stuffy Shell’ (2018) that reveal, through bizarre appearances, that ‘all-human inclination’ to build a little fenced and tame paradise.

In short, a significative collection that well expresses the intentions underneath the visual exploration of Paul D'Haese: the limits and inadequacy of a commodified space, now paranoid. Identity is far from the compact and recognizable historical city, and is increasingly prey to individual drives that are transforming the ancient dream of cohabitation into a familiar nightmare.

The book is well accompanied by texts that reveal hidden meanings, both in its perspective as Francis Denys declares and in its consequent social "battlefield" as Jean-Marc Bodson put it.

INFO

Design by Atelier Sven Beirnaert & Paul D’Haese
Texts by Francis Denys and Jean-Marc Bodson.
Released December 16th, 2018
ISBN 9789077207604
Dim. 28,8 x 24,6 cm, 90 pages, 4 colours
Stockmans Art Books


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LINKS

Paul D D'Haese 
Review by Dieter Debruyne on 'Belgopolis' series
Review by Steve Bisson on 'Dagblind' series
Urbanautica Belgium