Jef Bourgeau
Jef Bourgeau’s mature camera style is so strong that it can even shroud a street lamp, so that, instead of light, it seemingly emits darkness and shadows. His vision drapes geometrically clashing urban beauty with the sooty persona of its denizens.
The application of light and shadow is painterly and yet contemporary at the same time, hinting at dark emotions. There is a sense of forced isolation, of two people sharing a space yet disconnected, of a room within rooms.
His work is a quiet poetry of understatement and misdirection. As our eyes drift across Bourgeau’s photographs in search of a resting point, we invest the dark spaces between with a symbolic value: the alienation of life in an increasingly urbanized world.
- Jan van der Marck