Book presentation Blinked Myself Awake by Bieke Depoorter

• Tuesday 12 November 2024 

• Doors: 19u30; Presentation: 20u-2&u; Drinks and signing session: 21u-22u30

• If the weather is good, you will be able to look at the stars outside, in the Botanical Garden

• Autor Bieke Depoorter & special guest Gideon Jacobs

• Publisher: Hannibal Books

• Language: English

• Free 

In recent years, photographer Bieke Depoorter has sought out amateur stargazers, visited state-of-the-art observatories, and researched the history of astronomy. Never especially interested in the field earlier, she gradually realized that her new obsession was related to childhood memories lost due to trauma. The night sky is, after all, a kind of shared memory: the light from celestial bodies can take hundreds or thousands of light-years to reach our eyes on earth. Some observable stars may have disappeared long ago.

Depoorter felt reluctant to look at stars herself but was drawn to observing others as they observed the universe. In Blinked Myself Awake, she investigates the fragility of memory, photography's unreliability, the human desire for objectivity, and the elusive nature of ‘truth.’ She connects the dots of a highly personal narrative, interweaving images of stargazers with diaristic texts and fragments from the history of astronomy – a science that was forever changed by the invention of photography.

Bieke Depoorter received a master’s degree in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. Three years later, at 25 years old, she was made a nominee of the photo cooperative Magnum Photos, where she was named a full member in 2016. Depoorter has won several awards and honors, including the Magnum Expression Award, The Larry Sultan award and the Prix Levallois. Last year, she got nominated for the Deutsche Börse Foundation Photography Prize with her solo Exhibition 'A Chance Encounter' At C/O Berlin. She has published five books: A., Ou Menya, I am About to Call it a Day, As it May Be, and Sète#15. She worked together with Aperture, Editions Xavier Barral, Edition Patrick Frey, Lannoo, Hannibal, and Le bec en l’air to publish these books. In 2020, Depoorter started her own publishing platform ‘Des Palais’, together with Tom Callemin. The relationships Depoorter establishes with the subjects of her photographs lie at the foundation of her artistic practice. Accidental encounters are the starting point, and how these interactions naturally develop dictates the suite. Several projects have been the result of Depoorter always questioning the medium itself.