These images are a selection of my ongoing series “Sing Me A Song”
I’m triggered by the feeling a place radiates, which is always a fleeting moment constituted by the light, time of day, the season, the weather, the presence or absence of people, traces of past activities, the position where I stand, … Capturing this volatile sense of place is exciting because it allows you to add a layer to the myriad acts of perceiving, experiencing and sensing which turn mere space into place. By creating an image you change the place forever, no matter how tiny this change may be.
At the same time the image starts getting a life of its own as it conjures up a world of feelings, meanings and atmospheres.. In the series “Sing Me A Song” I explore how combining images creates new lines of interpretations and how the images start opening up a set of micro-narratives. Just by juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images new associations are elicited, new layers of meaning are tapped into that – in the individual image – lay dormant. By playing with the rhythm, the size and the order of the images, the sequence unfolds different story lines that seduce you to read them but that at the same time – by continuously shifting “plots”, “characters” and “points of view” – are complex enough to resist being nailed down to a single story. The series itself is constantly growing and changing: images are added and removed, relative positioning and sizing are changed, subsequences are altered. Like a song that changes each time it’s sung.
I’m a photographer and graphic designer living and working in Ghent, Belgium.
This project has been carried out during the last 15 years, taking photos all over Europe.
© text and pictures by Boris Snauwaert
