Horns & Horses (1988)

Karel Fonteyne puts a lot of hard work into his photographs, not just to make them ‘beautiful’ or to reinforce their imaginary transparency, but to give them a skin. He is to a great extent a photographer of the darkroom. This is where the most significant acts take place, such as the double exposure in the ‘Horses’ series. This is where the image is wrought as though by an artisan. By applying the light-sensitive emulsion to the image carrier (canvas or coarse paper), which sometimes causes ‘painting defects’ where the brush has not deposited a sufficient amount of emulsion so ‘unexposed’ scratches crisscross the smooth surface, the mechanical, clinical perfection of the photographic registration is replaced by the artisan imperfection of the human hand. We are looking at an image, not a window on reality. All these photographic manipulations have only one aim: to give the images a body, to complement looking with touch.

Steven Humblet

Hand painted emulsion on waterford watercolor paper Size 112x74cm.Framed in box