Blinked Myself Awake
In recent years, photographer Bieke Depoorter developed an overriding interest in astronomy. She sought out amateur stargazers, visited state-of-the-art observatories and researched the history of the field. Gradually, it became clear that her interest in astronomy was linked to lost memories from her past. After all, the night sky is a kind of shared memory; the light of celestial bodies takes hundreds, thousands or millions of (light) years to reach our eyes on earth. In Blinked Myself Awake, photographer Bieke Depoorter explores the power and fragility of memory, the human desire for objectivity and the elusive nature of 'truth'. She does this by interweaving photographs of amateur and professional stargazers, diary-inspired texts and fragments of astronomical history, in which often-forgotten female astronomers play a role.
Bieke Depoorter received a master’s degree in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. Three years later, at 25 years old, she was made a nominee of the photo cooperative Magnum Photos, where she was named a full member in 2016. Depoorter has won several awards and honours, including the Magnum Expression Award, The Larry Sultan award and the Prix Levallois. Last year, she got nominated for the Deutsche Börse Foundation Photography Prize with her solo Exhibition 'A Chance Encounter' At C/O Berlin. She has published five books: A. , Ou Menya, I am About to Call it a Day, As it May Be, and Sète#15. She worked together with Aperture, Editions Xavier Barral, Edition Patrick Frey, Lannoo, Hannibal, and Le bec en l’air to publish these books. In 2020, Depoorter started her own publishing platform ‘Des Palais’, together with Tom Callemin. The relationships Depoorter establishes with the subjects of her photographs lie at the foundation of her artistic practice. Accidental encounters are the starting point, and how these interactions naturally develop dictates the suite. Several projects have been the result of Depoorter always questioning the medium itself.