Alexandre Christiaens
° 1962
Lives and works in Dave (Namur)
Wherever I am, my photographic work is the formal extension of my experience of being in the world. I don’t pretend to render an “elsewhere” in my images – hypothetical, distant, exotic.
My photographic journeys draw their meaning from unexpected encounters with the landscape, the wild, the mineral, the plant, the ocean and the human. My desire is to plunge even deeper into the links that are woven and rewoven between all forms of life in nature – because they invite us to take a fresh look at all the forms of humanity within us.
My travels are therefore the foundations on which I build my photographic language, through which I strive to articulate a sensitive reading of the world I experience – surveyed, experienced, looked at. By constantly deepening the way I look at the world, my quest reveals a part of my own on the surface of silver paper: in the watermark of the film, the outside world is superimposed on, if not merged with, the world I experience, intimately felt. To give our eyes the possibility of falling into the immanence of the founding elements of our living part.
Alexandre has many photographic journeys to his credit, both on land and at sea, and has directed a number of photographic workshops. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Belgium and abroad. His photographs can be found in several public and private collections, including the Service général du patrimoine culturel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Casaespacio, FIFV Valparaiso. Cl, SACO Antofagasta. Cl, Centre régional de la photographie Nord Pas-de-Calais. Fr, Musée de la Photographie de Charleroi. Be, Bibliothèque Nationale Richelieu, Paris. Fr, Hasselt Cultural Center. Be, the Space Collection, In Cité Mondi Liège.Be …
Several individual and collective works have already appeared: Valparaiso, FIFV ediciones, Photobook Belge 1854 – now, Fomu, Musée de la Photographie d’Anvers & Éditions Hannibal, 2019; La neige bientôt, JPB Éditions #8; Hunter Grill, Origini edizioni Livourno maggio, 2017; Estonia, with text by Carl Havelange, Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2016; Eaux vives, peaux mortes, Éditions Yellow Now, 2012; En Mer. Voyages photographiques, Éditions Chasse-marée & Glénat, 2008; Grotesques. Concrétions et paysages, Les Brasseurs / Éditions Parallèle, 2007; Réseau cristallin, edited and designed by Alexandre Christiaens, with text by Eugène Savitzkaya.