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Description

'Kanariepiet' (Odd Stories) - 1/25, 2014
digital print mounted on mdf (15x11cm - 0,8 mm), matt coating
hand signed by the artist on the back.

-- Part of Carmen De Vos' solo show Odd Stories in Bruges 2014 in the Chapel of Awesomeness
-- published in her book The Eyes of the Fox, monography, published by Ander-zijds, 2018


- Carmen De Vos -

Flying Freelance Portrayer. Purveyor of Exquisite Photographic Peculiarities. Chroniqueur and Archiver. Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the late TicKL-Magazine. 

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. Carmen De Vos is a slow photographer. She registers, portrays and thinks up odd stories. She shoots Polaroids to frame these mental escapades, they get so easily out of hand. 

She enormously longs for what she’s afraid to loose: real human contact, the slowness of being and creating, the tangibility of materials. 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 colorisation, 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, stages and directs but the decayed chemistry and off-focus lenses add their magic. All by themselves. Which merrily 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.

With Odd Stories she presents a flippant selection of scenes with no educational value at all. Reinterpretations of collected images and imaginative arrangements of amassed impressions that, once staged and shot, result in a totally different narration. Almost like weird covers on Polaroid. Or else just made up.

A series of 30 images were mounted on black mdf, dimensions 15x11,3cm hand signed, stamped and numbered by the artist on the back.

Cute. And I dare say sensual.

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.