Eyes Wild Open: 70 Years of Photography, almost 30 prestigious photographers, 17 nationalities
Danish Photographer Jacob Aue Sobol takes part in prestigious photo exhibition at Belgian Botanique
From February 22nd, you can explore nearly thirty international photographers at the exhibition “EYES WILD OPEN – on a trembling photography“, at Botanique, Brussels. Among them is Danish Jacob Aue Sobol.
Eyes Wild Open – on a trembling photography
70 years of photography, almost 30 prestigious photographers, 17 nationalities
Eyes Wild Open highlights the relationships between generations of photographers whose practice is as intuitive as it is abrupt or transgressive. Initiated after the second world war by pioneers such as Robert Frank, William Klein or the founders of the legendary Japanese magazine Provoke, this singular approach to photography has stood the test of time, and its heritage remains particularly productive in contemporary creation.
The photographic experience at the exhibition goes from documentary to a more recent introspective or poetic path. Tracing a path through the work of each of them, a theme emerges: none of them is playing the adaption or imitation game. No posturing, no fakery, no counterfeiters. Though they may have drawn nourishment from the work of their predecessors. All these photographers have their eyes wild open. Their work is powerful, rich and diverse.
The exhibition is accompanied by a book, edited by André Frère Editions.
Jacob Aue Sobol
Sobol’s work presents a strong visual power and gives the viewer a truly touching experience. He captures real life through photography where he focuses on using his instincts as much as possible, focusing on the seemingly fleeting and irrational – he believes when he does so, his photos come to life, they evolve from showing to being.
Read about another Danish photographer receiving attention abroad
In 2013 Jacob Aue Sobol was one of two photographers contributing to the exhibition and following book “Veins”, which was developed by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Danish Cultural Institute in Riga, and designed by Latvian director and stage designer Jurgis Krasons. Veins explored toughness and tenderness, with the focus on seeing and meeting real life, more than on photographic aesthetics. The exhibition was a great success and traveled to Russia, China and Brazil. The other photograph taking part in the project was the legendary Anders Petersen from Sweden, who is also a part of the Eyes Wild Open exhibition.
Photographers
The exhibition brings together the work of 27 international photographers, who, apart from Jacob Aue Sobol and Anders Petersen, are:
Robert Frank, Ed van der Elsken, William Klein, Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira, Ishiuchi Miyako, Christer Strömholm, Dolorès Marat, Paulo Nozolino, Antoine d’Agata, Klavdijj Sluban, Michael Ackerman, Jehsong Baak, JH Engström, Olivier Pin-Fat, Tiane Doan Na Champassak, Lorenzo Castore, Arja Hyytiäinen, Alisa Resnik, Gilles Roudière, Stéphane Charpentier, Gabrielle Duplantier, Yusuf Sevinçli, Sohrab Hura, Sébastien Van Malleghem. Marie Sordat has curated the exhibition.
“Among them some are trying to revive and revitalise the documentary genre while others are exploring new introspective or poetic paths. Tracing a path through the work of each of them, a theme emerges: none of them is playing the adaptation or imitation game. No posturing, no fakery, no counterfeiters. Though they may often have drawn nourishment from the work of their predecessors, and there are links and correspondences that float clearly beneath the surface, they have no shackles and subscribe only to the school of untamed and untameable photography.
All these photographers have their eyes wild open. Their work is powerful, rich and diverse.
They are not stood before the world, they are in the world. They are not keeping a respectful distance, not bending to rules nor fashions. They are casting aside the conventions with images that rewrite their own subjective forms of expression. Their connection with reality and with the shot is physical, rough, immediate. Their moving, incandescent, nervous images are like stigmata: they bear witness to nothing other than their contiguity with a world that is sometimes overflowing. They ask more questions than they answer. Niggling and furtive, they evoke rather than describing, and reduce down to a perceptive intensity of pulsing ebbs and flows, convulsive, fragmented or fractional visions, and their emotional charge lies in that very tension. For it is the permeability of these photographers to the world that renders their images permeable to their viewers.
Eyes Wild Open brings together those who, in subverting photography, manage to pierce us with their contagious images.”
Caroline Bénichou.
Eyes Wild Open has received support from Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The exhibition runs from February 22nd to April 22nd 2018
at
Botanique
Rue Royale 236
1210 Brussels