![\"\"](\"https:\/\/new.space-collection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Capture-decran-2024-04-19-152007.png\")
<\/a>Lives and works in Li\u00e8ge<\/p>\n
I met Michael Dans at a mutual friend's house. She said, \"You'll see, he's great! It was a Friday evening, the end of spring, but it was still really cold and the sadness of autumn was lingering over Belgium like a virus in a child's lungs. Everyone was fed up with the cold, the lack of light, the cellar humidity that hadn't left us since October. The winter and autumn had seemed so long that we all felt like dying people who'd already been moved by a nurse to the cold room. In Belgium's history, this was a very special time: it really felt like the end of everything: the government of the day was pursuing an absurd and cruel policy, the world economy was no longer even trying to hide the fact that it was a mess, geopolitical tensions were leading to bloody wars in all four corners of the globe, and it was also a time when a whole spontaneous generation of madmen were blowing themselves up in the midst of what the media called \"innocent crowds\". It was in this context that I met Michael Dans. And the fact that it was at that moment and not at another is certainly significant, because for anyone who's a little fed up with the world and the bad taste of current affairs, Michael immediately appears as a kind of blessing. More than anyone else I've ever met, Michael gives off a frank, jovial impression of not giving a damn, as if he'd understood something essential about negotiating with the dread of everyday life: the world could be dying in its own juices, knowing that there was nothing more to be done for it, Michael seemed to have chosen not to worry too much about it until the end. Half-Viking, half-Jivaro, half-medieval knight, half-Comanche actor, half-Yakuza, half-punk, half-halterophile, Michael Dans fit the exceedingly rare profile of someone who could have done anything or nothing at all, and so chose to do strictly what he wanted, and what he wanted to do was something seemingly simple: wander around at night, meet people and take their pictures with cobbled-together flashbulbs. He showed me his photos, which were published in a book with a skull and crossbones on the cover, and I loved them immediately. They felt like a great decadent fiesta held in the last castle still standing, amidst the flames of the end of time. These photos were like him: funny, tragic, strange... Somewhere between playful pornography, undergrowth fetishism, motorsports magazine, architectural manual, surveyor's report or the icy aesthetics of the ebay classified ad, they all conveyed the unspeakable wonder of the vital impulse in the midst of a civilization coming to an end, something of the snide smile of the condemned man facing the rifles of the firing squad, an attitude I've always found rather classy. Anyway, I'd asked him how he got girls he met on street corners to pose with knife handles stuck in their vaginas, or wrapped in cellophane, or covered in snails, and he'd replied: \"You just have to ask\". I must admit, I was fascinated. It was as if the field of possibilities in my own life had suddenly opened up to unknown immensities. I asked him if he thought I'd be able to do it myself, and he told me, with that wonderful frankness that characterizes him: \"No, with you it's going to look like a booty call\". This guy had it all figured out: while I'd gone over to the cynical side of the world, while I'd already seen photography as a relatively shabby way of hoping to have adventures with an alternative flavor, Michael, with his photos of insomniacs, desperados, pallid junkies, rimmed girls and malnourished boys, had remained absolutely pure: he made photos because he knew how to make photos, and he liked making photos, and those photos opened onto stories, and stories are the best way to wait for death. So, of course, later on, like a real copycat loser, I tried to make Michael Dans photos: I wanted that light, I wanted those colors, those bodies and those looks. I'd failed miserably, and all I'd ended up with was a pallid, uninteresting soup. And I had to admit something terrible: to make Michael Dans, you have to be Michael Dans. - <\/span><\/span>Thomas Gunzig 2020.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n"},"class_list":["post-10831","artistes-space","type-artistes-space","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/space-collection.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes-space\/10831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/space-collection.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes-space"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/space-collection.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artistes-space"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/space-collection.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes-space\/10831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11177,"href":"https:\/\/space-collection.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes-space\/10831\/revisions\/11177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/space-collection.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}