The childhood home of Karin Borghouts

Kimberly

Gent is the place to be for photography this summer, it holds a festival throughout the city, called 80 days of summer. This was the perfect opportunity to grab my camera and hop on a train. I went to one of my all time favourite museums, dr. Guislainmuseum. 

I visited two exhibitions, a previous post was dedicated to the main exhibition in the museum, called Photo(sensitive). After leaving this room I find myself in a small corridor with two little rooms on each side. This is where I found the work of Karin Borghouts, a Belgian photographer. 

Whilst entering any of the rooms, you enter a white cube, with only a few photos on the wall. There's a strong contrast between the white walls and dark photographs. Her work shows a tragic happening in her life, her childhood home got hit by a fire. She transferred this happening in some very esthetically eminent images. 

What used to be rooms filled with life, are now only rooms where past memories are hidden. The fire leaves his traces and Borghouts succeeds in finding a sort of beauty in these traces. She has optimally used her artistic eye as a photographer.

The photographs are presented without any distractions, there aren't any labels next to them. Personally I think there is no need for any labels, the photographs speak for themselves. It stimulates you to look closely and understand what you are seeing. It helps you to notice every little detail and imagine how it was before the fire.  

Sidenote, what I love about dr. Ghislainmuseum is that even though it's a museum with a great amount of visitors, it's never packed with people. Every time I pay a visit I always get to walk around and spend a lot of time in front of one work without bothering anyone. 

For those of you who want to see more photos, you can always go to her website or just plan a trip to the museum. The exhibition runs until the 30th of August 2015. 

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Kimberly