How should we look at these pictures of photographer Gert Jochems? With lust or disgust? With dismay or emotion? With nostalgia or yearning?
S is a major series of photographs, taken by Belgian photographer Gert Jochems. They look at the ‘regular’ lives of ‘regular’ Belgian people, all of whom lead unconventional lives in private. In these photos, Jochems is an invisible observer in private sitting rooms, bedrooms and basements. Text in English and Dutch. AUTHOR: David Van Reybrouck was born in Flanders. He read archaeology and philosophy at the universities of Leuven and Cambridge and holds a doctorate from Leiden. He was a visiting scholar in Barcelona and Paris and a post-doctoral research fellow in the history department of Leuven. His essays and reportages have been published in most well known newspapers and magazines of Belgium and the Netherlands. As well as being a literary non-fiction writer (The Plague, Facing Belgium, A Plea for Populism), Van Reybrouck is an acclaimed playwright. Next to that, fascinated by the visual arts, Van Reybrouck has collaborated in book projects with leading photographers such as Stephan Vanfleteren (Belgium, 2007) and Carl De Keyzer (Congo (belge), 2009), as well as the painter/sculptor Koenraad Tinel (Scheisseimer, 2009). He was a writer in residence in Amsterdam and Wassenaar. Over the years, Van Reybrouck has travelled extensively throughout Africa. In May 2010, he finally published Congo: A History, an ambitious and absorbing history of Africa’s most devastated country. He lives in Brussels. SELLING POINTS: .Intensive and innovative series on sexuality in Flanders .Includes an essay This is no dawn / Dit is geen dageraad by author David Van Reybrouck .Gert Jochems has been selected as one of British Journal of Photography’s twenty photographers to watch in 2013 REVIEWS: More than a hundred images make up the final edit of the book, which is published to coincide with an exhibition of the work at Foto Museum Antwerp. It is almost anthropological in its scope, a cross-section of sexual experimentation that includes portraits of individuals, couples and groups engaged in sex or in various states of sexual play. - British Journal of Photography 90 colour and 30 b/w photographs