Marnix Goossens allows us to see the world as he himself sees it. His perspective is one of awe and amazement—awe inspired by the beauty of our surroundings, amazement evoked by everyday details.
‘Deep Light’ evinces the defining characteristics of Goossens’ work: a remarkable feeling for light-hearted, sometimes absurdist scenes; and a deepened perception in which he involves the observer. Clearly, photography is his medium.
‘Deep Light’ evinces the defining characteristics of Goossens’ work: a remarkable feeling for light-hearted, sometimes absurdist scenes; and a deepened perception in which he involves the observer. Clearly, photography is his medium.
Marnix Goossens’ work focuses on three main subjects: nature, portraits, and still lifes. Most of his photographs depict scenes from nature. Goossens creates highly-detailed images of trees, plants, and landscapes; he directs his attention to floral beauty, intriguing situations, and nature found in the human habitat. In his portraiture, he experiments with eliciting different personalities from the same person. His aim is not to merely depict his subjects’ physical appearance but to create fictional characters. He uses various objects and items of clothing to bring out his subjects’ desired expressions. His models include not only himself, but also relatives and friends. Finding a particular garment often inspires him to shoot a new portrait. In his still lifes, Goossens contrasts functional, everyday objects with other categories of objects and their settings, thus engaging them in new relationships of form and structure.
Goossens works in different genres (still lifes, portraits, and landscapes), but his different subjects share a common approach. Throughout his genres, the photographer depicts unexpected situations that he either encounters or creates himself. These scenes are often somewhat alienating or ‘out of the ordinary’. Goossens’ expresses a preference for man-made nature—nature in an urban environment, for example, and even natural motifs applied in the decoration of clothing and other objects. In his portraits, too, we see this interest in the artificial, especially when he photographs people as if they were characters from a film—other people entirely. He evokes a feeling of estrangement by creating unexpected contrasts and by focusing on details. This focus shifts the observer’s attention to the variety of forms and structures found in nature and in materials.
Marnix Goossens works with a technical (large-format) camera, enabling him to make finely-detailed photographs. He spends considerable time looking through his lens, carefully choosing the right frame, plane of focus, and composition, capturing a static scene rather than a moment in time. Virtually all of his prints bear the original framing chosen when taking the photo. The fact that technical cameras are not especially user-friendly prohibits the photographer from shooting a series of a particular person, object, or situation and—and simply selecting the best photograph later. Patience and careful observation are therefore the main ingredients in Marnix Goossens’ work.
This publication offers a retrospective of Goossens’ photography of the last decade; the book emphasizes his more recent work. The selections for the book were made in close collaboration with the artist. The arrangement of the photos encourages readers to explore the relationships between the different genres represented and the different images themselves. Exploring Goossens’ work in this way—through the lens of both genre and image—reveals the defining characteristics of Goossens’ work. What are these defining characteristics? The answer is addressed in the text that follows—and, of course, in the photographs themselves. Observation, careful observation: that is, after all, what matters most.
