Dirk Braeckman

Why an honorary doctorate? 

03 August 2021. Dirk Braeckman receives the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from VUB in recognition of his commitment as a photographer to a lifelong artistic quest for the boundaries of photography as a visual art form, and for creating, as a painter with light, intriguing representations of reality.

Trailblazer without a map

Dirk Braeckman is internationally appreciated and renowned, as a photographer, sculptor (e.g. Over the Edges in 2000) and pictorial artist who seeks interfaces and cross-pollination with the other art expressions. 

As an explorer/eclaireur, he quite deliberately seeks boundaries in photography. He pushes the boundaries for himself and the viewer. He invites you to explore the multidimensional meaning of his art. Braeckman also invites you to start your own search, without an instruction manual. He gives the viewer the freedom to interpret. With this approach, he links up with the way in which we at VUB implement initiatives such as Redelijk Eigenzinnig and PACT and with our conviction that thoughts are free and that “maverick-thinking" should replace “thinking in the box". 

About his career

Photos as paintings

Dirk Braeckman is born in Eeklo on 15 June 1958. As a teenager, he befriends painters and wants to become a painter himself. Paradoxically, this is the reason why he enrols in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 1977, urged on by a friend. After all, don't many painters draw inspiration for their works from photographs? 

His first contact with a darkroom leaves an indelible impression. He is immediately hooked on photography and the way it captures reality. But his first ambition, to become a painter, remains: he wants to approach photography the way painters approach their paintings. This results in a work process in which he intervenes in the development process itself in various ways, including with chemicals, brushes, and different light sources. 

After his studies, in 1982, together with Carl De Keyzer and Marc Van Roy, two fellow photographers, he founds 'Galerie XYZ', the only gallery in Ghent that focuses on photography - it exists until 1989. Meanwhile, Braeckman also makes a name for himself as a photographer, with his own exhibition in Milan as early as 1985. This is the beginning of a very successful career, bringing him to galleries all over Europe. His exhibition in the Belgian Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale also makes him stand out among overseas visitors, and in 2019 he has his first exhibition in the US, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. 

A refuge amidst violence

In 2017, Braeckman represents Belgium at the Venice Biennale, turning the Belgian pavilion into a soothing haven of silence amidst the noisy violence of the other entries.

 

Photographs as sleeping bombs

This characterisation comes from Luc Sante, a Belgian-American writer who published a collection of crime scene photos from New York. Braeckman fully agrees.

From document to experience

In the beginning, characters appear in Braeckman's photos, in a later period much less so. It is a deliberate choice in the direction of photos as an experience rather than a document.