Details

Description

Tales of Self-Illumination (Self Portrait), 2001
22x22cm (plus a 2cm white border)
Fine art print based on a Carmen De Vos Polaroid photograph
on RAG ULTRA SMOOTH, 305gsm, 100% cotton by HAHNEMÜHLE
Hand signed & numbered by artist Carmen De Vos
edition of 3


The Belgian photographer Carmen De Vos shoots Polaroids to frame her mental escapades. They get so easily out of hand. She thinks up situations and collects fantasies. 

Once upon a time she found herself guilty of home-crafted mischief for TicKL, her English art porn Polaroid magazine. She never really got cured from naughtiness. She can’t help but traveling back to these blessed times of free-love photography with her Polaroids.

Almost without exception she uses old Polaroid camera’s, long time expired film and self-made filters. Her tools and methods – such as film bleaching and deliberate film obstruction – are not precise and are not even geared towards a perfect representation. They often yield results – such as colorization, deformation, unsharpness – which she could never have predicted on forehand with any certainty, because their flaws do not allow for calculation. She’s not in control. She fights the material. She plans and directs but the decayed chemistry and off-focus lenses add their magic. All by themselves. Which surprises her. Or ruins her image. This battle attracts her as much as it frustrates her. She loves to create within these limitations, to try to produce the best possible image within the narrow circumstances given. Luckily, she’s a sucker for imperfections.

Furthermore she is fascinated by the unreliability of the human memory as an instrument for recording reality. Our recollection is at best a potpourri of isolated but genuine events. Often not even that. Our memory assails us with a medley of impressions we have assembled throughout the years. Our brain orders, rearranges, adapts, interprets, colours, decolourizes, dims and accentuates these memories of our wannabe past independently of our conscious will. In many ways as do her Polaroid pictures.