i always wanted to take more photographs of agata. that never … · 2019. 4. 23. · ‘ i always...

‘ I always wanted to take more photographs of Agata. That never happened to me before.’

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De Standaard/Cultuur - 03 Nov. 2018 - Lieve Van de Velde, Photo Sebastian Steveniers

Bieke Depoorter became known for her one-night photographs of people in their homes, where she stayed overnight before moving on. Now she is doing the exact opposite. For a year, she has been photographing the same woman: Agata – last name unknown. A conversa-tion between the photographer and the muse.

On first thoughts the difference between Magnum photographer Bieke Depoorter and Agata could not be any greater. The plain looks of Depoorter seem to be at odds with Agata’s powerful and sexy flam-boyance. And yet they have found each other, which pleases them both. The way they deal with each other conveys the impression that they are in a relationship: an uncommon friendship rather than a relationship in its classical sense. The word ‘muse’ would be the best term to describe it.

‘Or maybe we are each other’s therapist’, they chuckle. They some-times do not see each other for months, but once they reunite and touch each other’s lives for a moment, it is intense. Like it is now. Just before the opening of Bieke’s exhibition. Agata is standing in one of the top rooms of the Antwerp Photo Museum, surrounded by pho-tos of herself. Photos taken by Bieke. Photos taken in various atmo-spheres and appearances. Taken in different places too. In Paris, but also in Beirut and Athens, where they went together.


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We see Agata in a garish pink bathing suit, stand-ing in an equally pink room. We see her dancing naked through a room window. We see her crying unashamedly before the lens. We see her walk-ing through Paris in a small fur coat, her breasts half-naked. Intriguing portraits.

We do not know a lot about her. She tells us she is Polish. At eighteen, she moved away to London, New York and Paris. Some photographs are accom-panied by a note: notes and thoughts scribbled by Agata. About how Bieke helped her to get rid of her fears, for example. In a long letter Agata writes to Bieke what she means to her. ‘You shed light on many of my hidden identities. I didn’t think any of them would ever be good enough to be brought to the surface.’

Darkness

But first, back to the start. Back to the day they came into each other’s lives. Bieke Depoort-er: ‘It happened in Paris, where I worked on a project by Magnum Photos: Live Lab. Three photographers had been invited to work on a series that would be displayed immediately afterwards. In the evening I wandered through Paris, in search of inspiration. That night I met a man who worked as a doorkeeper at a striptease club in the Pigalle district. He had seen me hanging around there at night, and was curious about my curiosity. He told me about Agata. He thought that we would get along. That night, I went for a drink at the club and got into conversation with Agata. The man was right: we clicked with each other.’

Agata: ‘She told me that she wanted to take photos. I immediately felt good about it. I felt that we shared something.’ Later on, they discovered that - at that exact moment - they both had doubts about life, doubts about who they were and what they wanted. Agata in

the same letter: ‘You questioned photography, questioned your life, you suffered from a love af-fair that was drawing to a close. You just wanted to pack your bags, return to Belgium and nev-er touch a camera again.’

Bieke Depoorter: ‘Yes, it wasn’t the best period of my life. But we didn’t talk about that yet during that first night. We just felt that we shared something.’

‘Maybe it is also the longing for darkness that we have in com-mon’, Agata suggests. ‘In every sense of the word. Darkness


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as in: melancholy. But also as in: love of the night.’ Depoort-er: ‘Yes, I agree. Daylight does not inspire me to take photos. I love the nightlight. There is something filmic about it. And people just change as soon as the sun sets.’ ‘The masks are dropped’, Agata says. ‘I am crazy about nighttime. At night, there is much more room for imagina-tion, if only because of a reduced visibility. There are parties at night as well. I am crazy about techno parties. Everything is much less structured. I love the chaos of the night.’

The stripper

Agata takes out a series of photographs showing her having sex - or giving the impression of her having sex – with a man. She is wearing a strap-on penis, he is bent over. Initially these photos were not included in the exhibition, but since Agata wanted to show them, they were printed afterwards. They still have to be given a spot between the other por-traits, letters and notes in the exposition. The two of them are discussing which is the best spot.

The photographs raise questions. It is one of Aga-ta’s performances at techno parties and sex clubs. ‘I rather think of myself as an artist than a stripper’, she says. ‘But when I strip, I also put on an act. I am not a regular stripper. Many customers do not un-derstand me.’

‘You are a good stripper’, Bieke says. ‘I am a fanta-sy’, Agata replies. ‘According to Bieke, I use my act as a means of power. It gives me power over all of the men I basically despise.’ Bieke: ‘Yes, the thing you do is the opposite of the image people gener-ally have of strippers. There is nothing submissive about you.’

That first night, she was not necessarily looking for a striptease bar, Depoorter says. ‘On the contrary.’ As if she is defending herself against allegations of her appealing to the metropolitan clichés. ‘These kinds of stereotypes are exactly what I wanted to avoid. I do look for places where I can sit down for a while, observe, where I can grasp the atmosphere. Not necessarily to do reportage photography. I


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wanted to take photos of Agata. And this striptease bar simply was the place where we met.’

‘After our first talk we immediately started taking photos’, Agata says. ‘My room in the building where I lived at that time was entirely pink. I wanted to do something with it for a long time. The garish pink bathing suit was something I found in one of my suitcases.’

The pink photo opens the exposition. She is not using the first-person-plural narrative fortuitously. This is not a photographer-model story. Both of them consider the Agata series as a joint project, with input coming from both sides.

In a way it has become Bieke Depoorter’s trademark: plunging into the lives of others, pho-tographically speaking. But this was different. ‘I usually take photographs of people I stay with for the night, or people I briefly meet. With Agata it did not end with that one session. I felt that I wanted to see her again. She stayed on my mind. I always wanted to take more photos. That never happened to me before.’

‘Whenever I take a photograph of someone, I try to record, capture something. What fasci-nated me about her, was that each time I saw her, it felt as if I was seeing a whole different person. Each time there was a new Agata, and each time I wanted to capture that Agata as well. As if she kept on slipping away from me. There was an elastic band between what was

real and what was not, between the person she genuinely is and the parts she was playing.’

‘At the same time there was a more philosophical side as well, evok-ing questions about photography tout court: is it even possible at all to capture a person in one picture, one portrait? I tried to grasp as many Agata’s as possible and it required just as many photographs. It was so strange. Some of these photos are an act. An interesting per-formance. The spectator will not always notice. That too has become the theme of this project: what is real?’

We pause before a photo series of Agata wearing a curly grey wig. Bieke: ‘Sometimes Agata plays Germaine (laughs). She is the former owner of the house, which is now the squat where Agata lives. Ag-ata puts on Germaine’s clothes and wig, and acts theatrically à la Germaine. Then who is who, and what? That is the question. Agata has become a persona.’

Agata: ‘People often take too much for granted, which is exactly what I like to provoke. If you do not put the brakes on what is going on inside of your head, your imagination can take you to the most beau-tiful places. My life may be a bit weird, but just because of the weird-ness it is filled with beautiful moments. Cinematic moments even.’


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Therapeutic

Agata: ‘An idea which I had to get used to, was that Bieke want-ed to photograph the real me as well. She just wanted to see my face like it is. See me walking through Paris in normal clothes. Or photograph me while I was crying. Without having to do any-thing extreme. Seeing it now, I think I look pretty that way.’

Bieke: ‘The first time I saw her, Agata’s legs were covered with scars and bruises, all because of the hardcore performances she did.’ Agata: ‘I often worked with chains and whips. I was con-

vinced I had to sacrifice my body for a higher artistic purpose. Bieke and I, we used to have long, intense and very emotional discussions over this. Does one have to suffer for art? To me, the suffering felt like a kind of personal exorcism. As if I had to prove myself all the time. I considered my life as a personal martyrdom. Bieke made me see that this was not necessary. That you shouldn’t sacrifice yourself like that. At the same time, it was a struggle with my inner demons, demons that all of us have and all of us have to face. In that sense, Bieke has changed my life, yes. I learned to love myself and to overcome many fears.’

Yes, they admit, they kind of were each other’s therapist. Because it also worked the oth-er way around. Bieke: ‘Personally I hadn’t given much thought to most of the matters we discussed, but at the same time, I struggled with these matters as well. In that sense Agata opened a door inside of me, a door of which I did not know what was behind it.’

The introduction label in the photo museum defines Bieke and Agata’s relationship as ‘complicated’. Bieke: ‘It is difficult to put into words. I can communicate better through pho-tographs than through words anyway (laughs). But nevertheless it is rather exceptional that photography can determine a friendship in such a way.’

Good at melancholy

It is remarkable to see how cheerful the real-life Agata is. A cheerfulness one would not hand to her looking at her photographs, in which she exudes some sort of melancholy. ‘Do you think?’, Bieke asks. ‘I don’t think she looks unhappy.’

Above all, Agata sees beauty: ‘Bieke is just so good at melancholy. She knows exactly how to grasp this kind of emotion.’ Bieke: ‘Of course this is also important: the photographer always adds a personal touch. People who look too happy scare me. And anyway, Agata, I do not consider you to be the happiest person in the world’, Bieke chuckles. ‘No, I am not the happiest person in the world,’ Agata roars.


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How does she feel about the idea of several thousands of people glancing at her photo-graphs and returning home with a certain image of her? ‘I love it!’, Agata exclaims. ‘Phew,’ Bieke laughs, ‘glad you are not having second thoughts all of a sudden.’ ‘No, I would give anything to get into these people’s heads and see what kind of image they are forming of me. There will be all kinds of imaginary Agata’s. A wonderful thought, I think.’

One would not assume it when hearing and seeing them together, but their first encounter did not happen that long ago. ‘Oh my god, it has been almost a year all the same’, they say in unison. And their story continues. They are planning to go on a trip to Poland together, to visit Agata’s parents. Bieke spreads her arms out wide across the room. ‘This is a time-line, but it continues.’

Agata is on the same wavelength. She concludes her letter to Bieke with: ‘We have become quite good at these improvisations and I cannot wait to carry on with it. I give myself to you and you cloak it in Bieke. And I am sure that something beautiful can come of it.’

The photo-reportage with Agata is on display in the retrospective of Bieke Depoorter at the Antwerp Photo Museum until February 10th.

Lieve Van de Velde

Copyright © 2018 Mediahuis. Alle rechten voorbehouden

Source:

Van de Velde, L. (2018). ’Photographer Bieke Depoorter: I always wanted to take more photo-graphs of Agata. That never happened to me before.’ [’Ik wou altijd meer foto’s van Agata maken. Dat is me nog nooit eerder overkomen’] (E. Cochez, Vert.). Mediahuis. De Standaard/Cultuur Subject:

Recent work of Belgian Photographer Bieke Depoorter

Date:

3 November 2018 Author:

Van de Velde, Lieve

Keyword:

Interview latest work Belgian Photographer Bieke Depoorter

i always wanted to take more photographs of agata. that never … · 2019. 4. 23. · ‘ i always...

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