Tom Callemin

The work of Tom Callemin (°1991, Ostend, works in Ghent) derives from the question what it means to take

a picture of someone or something. For this purpose he’s not in search of images in reality but he tries to

reconstruct certain memories. Mostly dark photographs with little or no colors evoke an uncanny and

silenced mood that is not fixed in time and space. The protagonists that inhabit his photographs seem to be

caught up in thoughts and withdrawn in their own world. His images construct an experience. It’s about the

evocation of an enigmatic instant on which the spectator can’t get a hold.

In the different photographic works one can recognize different strategies used by the artist to approach the

core question about the role of the photographer. In this way he examines, among other things, the limits of

portrait photography. The interaction between the photographer and the model is the central theme. Which

roles can the photographer adopt? How can he engage in this interaction? In this way the artist tries to

portray a person who is not involved in the photographic game of looking and being looked at. Callemin

makes his models pose in the dark. Once they are fully relaxed and they forget the presence of the

photographer, their picture is made with harsh flashlight. In this way he tries to make an unaware and sincere

recording. Yet the role he plays in the registration of this fair moment is ambiguous, his influence on the final

result is significant. The artist never works with snapshots but directs every little aspect in the image

meticulously. The harsh flashlight reveals the controlled spontaneity. This relates to the noticeable influence

of theatre and cinema, in the way the subject is depicted and in the way in which the artist reconstructs

certain events and memories. He diverges every form of narrativity. He rather attempts to isolate a

concentrated moment, a long stretched non-moment, frozen in time and space.

His works are not divided in series but are autonomous and generate new interpretations with every

combination. What holds the images together is the mechanism of looking.

In every work a new situation is shown to the photographer, and thus to the spectator. Something that seems

to be be covered, was not for us to be seen. The act of seeing becomes a confrontation that tends to be

voyeuristic, even violent. Other images show something that is displayed for us to be seen and poses

questions about the purpose of displaying a subject to the eye.

With the contribution of Ann Cesteleyn

Represented artists