“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Wednesday November 2nd — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Wednesday November 2nd — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Wednesday November 2nd — —

Index 2006 — 2016

We have been following the highly talented Antwerp-based photographer Frederik Vercruysse from the moment we discovered his collaborations with fellow photographer Filip Dujardin some years ago. In recent years Vercruysse worked on a broad scale of projects, ranging from commissions for brands and magazines, next to free projects of which his ‘Tempo Polveroso‘, shot in the marble quarries outside of Villa Lena, still is a big favorite of ours.

Last week marked another important milestone in the career of the Belgian: for the very first time ever, presenting a collection of some of his best photography in a printed publication, produced together with publisher Luster. Named ‘Index 2006-2016’ the elegantly designed book includes architecture and interior design photos, as well as his signature captivating clean cut still lifes, compositions and landscape photography — all fresh, graphic images bathed in a soft light, showing his extraordinary eye for details. The two main fascinations behind the world he produces; graphics and composition, are omnipresent in his portfolio. The curation of the works presented in the new book pre-eminently show how controlled Vercruysse works: always taking the time to carefully arrange and rearrange, until he has found the most balanced composition — resulting in immaculately defined images of the highest aesthetic standard.

If I can’t control reality, I like to control the image of reality

To categorize the labor of ten years portraying the world as he sees it through his lens, the book is divided in three parts:

Composition shows compositions from carefully arranged bandages to a creation with a notebook and briefcase or a perfectly aligned set of cutlery. In his still lifes, the photographer creates a kind of micro-architecture with an eye for lines and symmetry.

In Control, Vercruysse’s fascination for architecture surfaces. In each building or interior he photographs, he looks for the one detail that intrigues him the most. Like a graphic designer, he plays with lines, structures, colours and perspective. His architecture photographs are telling for the time they were made in, but they also tell a more intimate story about how people live and work. It is his way of portraying people.

And even when the photographer really can’t control his subject, he manipulates reality. The third part of Index, Out of Control, focuses on Vercruysse’s landscape photography. Often, the images are manipulated so that they create a new reality, a reality that evokes a kind of romantic atmosphere for the photgrapher. This again blurs the line between photograph and painting.

We love this remarkable printed overview of ten years of photography by this bright eye from Antwerp!

See here for our Inspirations interview we did with Frederik Vercruysse in 2015.

For more work by Frederik Vercruysse see here

Order ‘Index 2006 — 2016’ here