Category Archives: Visiting

Kröller-Müller Museum

By Herman | Published April 24, 2011

This week Tuesday I visited the Kröller-Müller Museum near Arnhem.This museum has a permanent collection of Impressionist, Expressionist and Cubistart from 1870 to the present.

Besides the permanent exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh and his contemporaries was the temporary exhibition review by Jan Fabre. He is one of my favorite artists.
There were many of his works, old and new, which I had not seen. It is worth visiting this exhibition, a half day is needed to fully enjoy the deviousness of artworks.

One of the fascinating works of Jan Fabre was seen in the great hall of the museum. In the Royal Palace in Brussels, he dressed a ceiling with thousands of beetles. He has taken a piece of this ceiling mounted thereon a wax figure of a black man, with lashes on his back, and other works in the same room linked with the Belgian-Congolese history. Symbols such as Cote d’Or, cut off hands, Leopold II, diamonds, the Belgian franc …….

As fan I bought the book Hortus Corpus: the body of a garden.

Musée de la Photographie – Charleroi

By Herman | Published February 10, 2011

Yesterday, with a number of students I visited the museum in charleroi. After a drive of more than 1 1/2 hour  we arrived. It was already several years since I had visited this museum. Besides the extensive permanent collection of old cameras, old photographs of masterpieces and contemporary pictures, now there are three exhibitions to see.

LeonardFreed, an American photographer who took images in the society especially in a tightmanner.

Lueck Simon took pictures of older women and placed them in a separated environment and recorded the women with amazing views.
Fernand Demeunier: in the early ’40 he took portraits in a special way starting with a softfocuslens and processed through a specific experimental procedure. This gives an almost quaint atmosphere.
Besides the  exhibitions there  is an extensive permanent collection. The most famous photographers have one or more works in the collection. My favorites are: Andres Serrano, who is known for his extreme and shocking images: corpses photographed in the morgue, his pispictures and extreme sexually explicit images.

Duane Michals: he is the one who inspired me to become a photographer. He is known for his visual storytelling. During my studies I made several sequences with D. Michals as inspiration. One of the projects I want to do is to make a few new stories and photograph it as a sequence.

Robert Frank: known for his book “The Americans” published in 1958 .His pictures were out of focus, gritty, dark and unconventional of framing. He also broke with the optimistic and very energetic atmosphere in American photojournalism from the fifties. Frank photographed with the eye of an outsider: quick, unobtrusive and sometimes without looking through the lens. Now and then his shadow is  in the picture..

Stefan de Jaeger is a Belgian photographer and  artist, born in Brussels in 1957. One of the first artists to use the snapshot from Polaroid cameras to make great compositions that recall the painting. Meanwhile, the painter David Hockney used a similar technique, but with a different sensitivity.

Expo Nan Goldin

By Herman | Published November 29, 2010

Saturday, November 27, 2010, together with my colleague Sigrid and 15 students, we visited an exhibition in the Photomuseum of Rotterdam. The hotographers Nan Goldin and Duane Michals were the guests. It were two very different exhibitions. Nan Goldin is known for her raw photography. Her technical skills are poor. No rules for the compositie. Blurry pictures. Overexposed rare flash and bad shots. Subjects are mostly friends from her immediate surroundings: transvestites, gaypeople, her family, her ‘tribe’. But what power, what an emotion!! She showed the intimacy of its surroundings. Very recognizable, very fragile. I was impressed, even hours later…… It was the first time that I saw so many of her work together.
This exhibition showed 6 slideshows of various durations. The shortest was 15min the longest  45min. Due to the large amount of slides (I counted almost 1800!!) they had the impression that you were sucked into the life of Nan Goldin .Wonderful! You can visit the expo until 2 jan 2011. Enjoy!

Joe McNally and me

By Herman | Published November 28, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010, I went to Zoom Experience  in Utrecht (The Netherlands). A big event with different companies and different workshops. It was bigger than previous year and certainly recommended to those who are dealing with photography.
New products and software were produced. Some students of mine were also present and I’ve gave them more information about the accessories that they wanted to buy. Photobags, reflective screens, expodisc, tripods, graycards, you name it. Xmas and New Year are not far off! At the end of the day, this is what I’ve been waiting for, the workshop with Joe McNally. One of my favorite photographers. In the Nikon theater he played with different lighting setups with Nikon Speedlights. The SB900 and SB800 were present in large numbers. And of course the D3x. In a simple, clear and funny way he led the audience from one level to another. Starting with an open flash, a reflection screen as diffuser, a second flashunit as rimlight. In the following setups more flashs and he also  placed  gels on the strobes. Yellow and blue. Crossed over eachother. In the background four flasunits directly to the camera,the audience was holding them. Fascinating!
Everything was controlled from the camera served as Master. The other flashes were all placed in separate groups. Each group had its own parameters. The flashs was measured and adjusted through the Nikon TTL system. Afterwards, my colleague Marc bought the book “Hot Shoes Diaries” and Joe signed it and I, I was on the picture with Joe McNally. Thank you Joe for the interesting workshop. Thanks to Marc Poelmans who made the picture.