© Mirjam Devriendt
Exhibition at FoMu, Museum of photography, Antwerp
moments of writing
A series of pinhole photos.
From 2004 to 2010, I made a series of portraits of writers focusing on the action of writing, the spirit of the creative energy and the secret of the artistic process. The photos were made by placing a self-made pinhole camera on the writing desks of the authors, who were asked to carry on working. The more a writer moved around during this shoot (sometimes lasting up to 50 minutes), the more he became a ghost-like image.
As I had the occasion to host many writers from all over the world in my house as part of a residence program, this seemed to be the ideal way to photograph them without disturbing their creative process. I made more than one hundred portraits over six years.
The book Moments of Writing was published in 2010 by Lannoo.
“Using nothing more than a small black box as a slow eye on writers’ desks, Alexandra Cool has made multi-faceted portraits: portraits of writers, of writing, of the art of writing, of writing rooms and even of time.” Bernard Dewulf
