Pistoleros (2004 – 2007)

"Like most, boys, I used to enjoy roaming the forest or wandering along the waterline picking up sticks shaped like pistols."

Fifty years letter, my daily confrontation with the atrocities and the genocides in Srebrenica and Rwanda, or even Iraq, inspired me to draw on what originally started out as a game. I decided to photograph these bits of wood, with terrifying precision. By adding words and text I was able to push these images to an unexpected climax. This combination has thus become a cry of resistance and an indictment of men's never-ending cruelty. Spring proved to be the ideal period to collect the evidence that I was looking for. The twigs dropped by birds while building their nest were photographed and catalogued like the evidence of a crime. These items where then given a new meaning. The dove's olive branch was transformed into a " nest of weapons ". The veil covering our society is lifted for a mere second:the list is endless. Hundreds of millions of innocent people died during ongoing conflicts.

Pistoleros is a cynical and sad reminder of political events, massacres, dictators, victims and the people who fought the turn of events with words and their inner conviction. In contrast, these photos do not display this cruelty: rather, they confront us with our own carapace of indifference, which in turn becomes an ideal breading ground for this cruelty.

Karel Fonteyne

Technic: Ink-jet print on archival Hahnemuhle barite paper. Ed4. 120x144 and 89x114cm. Text embossed in pictures.Framed in box.