Ingenium

Yesterday (my birthday) I visited the “Ingenium” photo exhibition at the Bozar in Brussels (www.bozar.be), together with Johan Doumont. It’s a very big show featuring almost 350 pictures. It starts with a series of images dedicated to the four basic elements – air, water, earth and fire – and then offers a survey of all kinds of ways mankind has tried to control and domesticate these forces. Predictably, the vastness of this subject matter and the wide range of photography styles represented (National Geographic-like stuff, socialist realism, pictorialism, humanist photography, Düsseldorf school, modern photo journalism, etc) make for a quite disjointed viewing experience. Of course it’s always good to have the opportunity to see a real Becher, Burtynsky, Sugimoto, Misrach, Frank, etc. Lot’s of unknown names too. The most impressive exhibit was a tryptich by a photographer unknown to me: Paolo Nozzolo (?). It showed three sober, sombre black-and-white pictures taken at different locations remembering the Shoa.

Picture above: Thomas Weinberger, "Cracker", 2003