Bart Kuykens: A Tradition That Runs Fast
Article by Francesca Rabitti
The world never stops running, even during a pandemic, and we are always in a hurry, trying to be perfect, high-performing and reliable. Every time I feel overwhelmed, I like lying on the couch looking for some good stories in a book, or in a photograph: and it was during the lockdown, on a lazy afternoon spent looking for new stories to tell, that I found Bart Kuykens on Instagram. He is a Belgian photographer that shoots analogue and black and white.
The first time I saw his works I was particularly struck by their power: every single picture is dark, rough, a bit dirty, but at the same time so full of grace.
We are so used to shooting tirelessly with our smartphone that we have almost forgotten what it means to wait for our roll to be developed, and to see our photographs for the first time already printed.
This is a good lesson of slowness we should all learn, and Bart is an outsider in today’s ever-changing digital work.
He had never dreamed of becoming a photographer in particular, but he always felt he needed to tell stories in a visual way. Through still images or video. That’s what an artist does, because it’s the mirror of his feelings, his thoughts and emotions.
