fototazo: Editing with Vincent Delbrouck

Vincent Delbrouck editing

We are talking to a range of photographers, photo editors, professors of photography, book designers and others about the physical process of editing images. Selecting, sequencing and laying out photographs - be it for a magazine, book, online site or gallery presentation - seems something of a mysterious process for many photographers and a process that seems perhaps hard to give words to and that's exactly why I'm excited to see what comes up in this series.

We've had conversations with Rob Haggart, Ashley Kauschinger, Jeff Rich, Miska Draskoczy, Kevin WY Lee, Aya Takada, the pairing of Jessica Dean Camp and Cole Don Kelley, Amy Wolff, Daniel Coburn, Zora J Murff and Mariken Wessels.

Today we finish the series with a conversation with Vincent Delbrouck.

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Vincent Delbrouck editing

fototazo: Tell us a little about yourself and what area of photography you work in.

Vincent Delbrouck: I am Vincent Delbrouck, 41 years old, living in the countryside in Belgium. I have been working with photography for 20 years, now. I started with street photography and other documentary practices in black and white to land, at the beginning of the 21st century, in a more colorful and imaginary area of dirty realism, intimacy and simple ordinary confrontation with the environment. I took rapidly to this more intuitive way of making my work, following obsessions about a particular and concrete image of the Cuban island I felt when I was there, living with a family in Centro Habana, and later a similar sense of obsession inside nature and in the details of my long personal journey in Nepal and its mountains. I have never been attracted by sophisticated images and exoticism in photography. No "subject" please. I have to behave with photography as I behave in my own life. Touching things and living beings. being hurt. One day, I started to make crazy collages in diaries and it also became part of my work, a combination of sweetness and bitterness. I also write short stories and poems. All this together is my small territory of fiction, my humble way of writing and dealing with art, my only god, painting and literature.

Catalogue (Special Edition) © Vincent Delbrouck

f: How do you select images to work with from a larger group? What criteria do you use?

VD: I have a first selection when editing new stuff. Then I am coming back and coming back again and killing babies or resurrecting all "B sides" from the boxes, also using the materials to make collages (I don't work with digital photography. I have all images from films printed on paper), forgetting the "masterpieces" to play more comfortably with the second choices. Then I hear comments from some close friends I am working with (like Philippe Koeune, artist and graphic designer) or my wife... And I am often designing some constellations of images for the walls of exhibitions, challenging my eye, trying to experiment to break the rules, to compose with colors without the meaning of language. But mental choices, rational choices, like a selection for a competition is the worst thing I can do. I hate to choose for others because I can be lost myself, not that I see the pictures as sacred (I can kill any of them easily) but I am always curious to come back to some “”B sides,” to revisit the work, just for me. To open new paths I did not know. When I am working fast for a collage or a layout of a spread for a book, then I can follow intuitions and just be surfing on this wave, and it is easier for me. So there is no evident criteria. Mostly strange desires, and contradictions and "time being" are necessary, indeed.

From the series "Beyond History" © Vincent Delbrouck

f: Talk with us about how you begin to organize and sequence the images that you have selected in relationship to each other - as well as to text if there's text.

VD: There is no organization to follow any preconceived structure like a narration... or that is what I want to believe. So, anyway, there is no recipe, but generally I work first with the spreads, for a book. Each spread is like a collage of concrete images I have in stock (at this or that particular size). I am really making on the paper. No computer work. I hate it! (...computer work is the final step, of course, but not the origin of the layout. I also use it to build walls for exhibitions but this is only to choose the sizes of the images for mounting because I almost always change everything during the installation of the show to follow the energy of the moment) So, the organization is dependent from the energy of this long moment of creation. Of course I have images in my head about what should be the result, but I work with the obsessions and experimentation occurring during the period of time where the book is made as a big collage of spreads. It is always like this in my work, trying to be honest with the time fully lived during the process, establishing the mood I need to express in the book. The process is the sequence, the structure. If texts have to be included, they will be included but not because of this particular link with an image. I don't try to explain, or relate text and photography in a conceptual idea of making art. The way is the layout, the sequences of pages and an intuitive feeling when turning the pages of the book dummy, again and again and again, like music with good rhythm.

La Inmovilidad © Vincent Delbrouck

f: How do you consider the balancing of formal qualities in the photographs with the content/narrative of the series as a whole as you select and sequence a series?

VD: It depends on the project, but I don't have to think too much about the content because it is already there, you know. The shooting is so intense that those elements of narration I had in mind, maybe unconsciously, they appear on the film, I can assure you, and life is everywhere, floating here and there with its mystery. It is sensual, colorful, vibrant and concrete. We have all that in common on this Earth, all connected and this is the most exciting thing on this planet. It is silence. If you push too much the content of your analysis, you are starting also to take people watching your images as stupid human beings, giving too much explanation (even without words for it) with your art, which is boring and not open to any interpretation. I don't want to close the form with a border of content around the evidence to form a bad narration, like we can see too often in documentary photography. There is not enough mindfulness there. Photography is like meditation, or a very pure contemplation where the awareness of arranging the reality to stick with the obsessions is the only rule or morality. Reality is the excuse for making art. And form is the access. Or the key. But you need to invite people to visit a magical and secret garden, not an empty cave. This place is the content. Beyond the circle of form. In a remote and wild place there is living content. You have to find it. This is crazy, I know.

From the series "Beyond History" © Vincent Delbrouck

f: What are common issues, problems and questions that unfold for you during the process of laying things out?

VD: Being tired, working too much, blowing my mind. Those are my concerns and problems. The rest is like a dance. The process can be fascinating and this is why there is often no more control on the working time and then, the risk of blowing the mind. I did too much the last few years and I am now recovering from sickness and tiredness. Sometimes it is necessary to calm down and stop making books for a while and to try to sell them to pay the bills. The layout is nothing in comparison with the bad emotions of selling things and being afraid not to be able to pay for the printing. Promoting is dying.

Spread from Some Windy Trees © Vincent Delbrouck

Some Windy Trees © Vincent Delbrouck

f: How do you know when a layout is done?

VD: When I have enough spreads with collages, after several phases of work, I always have a more intense and short period of collective work at home with Philippe Koeune, and we select the pages we prefer, maybe creating new ones, and approaching the number of pages we want. I always have a precise idea of the number of pages I want for the book. It can vary a little bit during the process but not so much. After this collective work, I don't try to reconsider everything, because it would be without end. I try to be very confident and maybe I will try to add one or two other new "fresh" spreads but it is to keep me alive in the creative process, to challenge myself, to push beyond the limits and see what is happening. But most of the layout is done at that time, before starting to create the rhythm itself, by turning and turning the pages during hours, reorganizing again and again all of this on my sofa. Frequently some sequences of the book have appeared mysteriously when we have put all the pages on the floor with Philippe, intuitively. I always keep some lines of spreads I like from this "carpet" for the book and I build the rest as a puzzle. Taking the pile of pages in my hands and changing the order till the moment I can hear the music from the book itself.

f: What are common mistakes you see in editing?

VD: When there is no life breathing from it. When the editing is dying from the absence of self-confidence. The person has in fact nothing to say yet, he or she is not taking art for real and does not obey its rules. Art is dictatorship, says Jonathan Meese, the German artist, and he is right about that. You can watch his video on the internet. This guy is brilliant. I love his work, his approach of art. Most art is boring, transparent and has nothing to do with the excitement of life. Inside books: noisy paper, dead size, artificial light in the corners of this empty room where non-photography seems to be kidnapped by a fake person, too lazy to open his/her cool heart. This is crazy. The most crazy mausoleum of boring art. And let me say that I love books with empty pages, white pages, or simple sequences of images which can seem boring but are not. Maybe classical, but not boring. The only rule is to have good photography before daring to start thinking about how to do a good sequence. Photography rooted out of the gut. Dirty and so beautiful. Very simple also. (now thinking about Eggleston...)

f: Finally, what is the best advice you've ever gotten about editing?

VD: Find your gut and start breathing in it. And don't stop taking or collecting pictures until you are not so surprised by the result that you can close your eyes and make a dream about a book you had already made inside, in the shadows. Don't pretend to edit if you are not totally crazy in what you explore with photography. I can explore a woman inside me. Maybe you will find a squirrel or a river. This will be the collective path to confront a mountain with strong and personal editing and find the way to forget your fears. Listen to some people you trust, it can help. And try to walk around. Everywhere. With empathy. The editing and the book will be your puzzle at the end of the day and it will be easier for you to make it from chaos.

4.06.2017

Editing with Vincent Delbrouck