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Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt

The world that Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt reveals to us is not a happy one. If he does not travel the planet to bear witness to the pains of the world, if he escapes the fascination of war, drama and blood, it is clear that he does not make a pact with the world of privileges.
He talks about us. About our children, our days, our loneliness,
of our puffs of joy, of our fatigue, of the death that lurks, of the curious way the earth turns, of the light that strangely cuts our silhouettes on the absurdity of the world. Interior/exterior landscape we no longer know, but the gaze is intense, we go deep into the described universe. The form holds the point firmly, it tells in images, with an exemplary economy of means, what long speeches would not manage to say. He shows us a world that is not quite square, and offers us a personal geometry.
The dream is never far away in Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt’s images, he photographs a waking dream, free for us to associate our own with it.
Rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, chord, dissonance are at the heart of his preoccupations. This is perhaps what induces the strange impression that his photographs are not dated, which makes it possible to juxtapose images taken thirty years apart. It is this constancy of harmonic composition that gives the work a definitive coherence. Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt’s gaze is acute and penetrating, serious, tender, mysterious, funny at times, it is the gaze of a man who looks at the world and finds in it more questioning.
than answers. Between smile and worry, it’s a unique look. A last word, it is his own, he knows that his images have always travelled “on wings”.
of chance and doubt”.
Francine Deroudille (excerpt from Michel Vanden Eeckhoudt, “Photo Poche”, n°110)

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