Max Pinckers will give an improvised talk in which he speculates about his own practice in relation to documentary photography. He approaches documentary as both a critical reflection on photography itself and a way of dealing with reality in an attempt to understand it and communicate about it. How can documentary express social concern while at the same time recognize its own
shortcomings and blind spots? How can we define a shared sense of realism in a hyper-individual and confusing era of post-truth and fake news in which there is no longer a consensus about what is real half-truth fiction or entertainment?
Introducion by Giuseppe Oliverio, Founding and Artistic Director – PhMuseum
In collaboration with PhMuseum.
FREE ENTRANCE BY RESERVATION
Max Pinckers (1988) grew up in Indonesia, India, Australia and Singapore, and is currently based in Brussels, where he was born. His work challenges the conventions of documentary photography by exploring theatricality, performativity and collaboration within documentary and photojournalism, made visible through the explicit use of cinematic lighting and staging in a documentary context. Photography, for Pinckers, is a speculative gesture that involves more than the mere representation of external realities. His approach to reality and truth is plural and malleable, open to articulation in different ways.
His works take shape as self-published artist books and exhibition installations such as The Fourth Wall (2012), Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty (2014), Margins of Excess (2018), Red Ink (2018) and State of Emergency (2024). Pinckers is a Doctor in the Arts and a guest lecturer at the
School of Arts/KASK in Ghent. He has received multiple international awards, such as the Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg 2015 and the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2018.