For Brigitte
Titus Simoens
To create the book For Brigitte (2017) I collaborated with a woman who wanted to give her seventy-year-old sister Brigitte a present. I dove into the family’s archive and looked for images that matched the sisters’ description of Brigitte as the ‘prettiest girl in class’. The selection was then scanned and a new book was created out of the imagery. The design was a result of automatic placement; images were cropped and then became new images in the process. This appropriation of a family archive resulted in a book that shows my very personal experience of the encounters with Brigitte as well as a universal photographic document of time. The book For Brigitte, published by APE (Art Paper Editions) was shortlisted in 2018 for the Author Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Kassel Photobook Award, Athens Photo Festival and Photo Espana. For Brigitte is included in Photobook Belge, an overview of photo books created by Belgian photographers, published by Hannibal.
Titus Simoens (b. 1985) is a photographer based in Ghent, Belgium. In 2015, Titus Simoens made his first book Blue, See - Mount Song - Los Domadores, published by Hannibal. From 2016 to 2018, he followed a master’s program at KASK School of Arts in Ghent, where he made three consecutive publications on encounters, “Tu me dis”, published by APE (2016), “For Brigitte”, published by APE (2017) and “11:00 am”, published by APE (2018). With his book “For Brigitte” he was shortlisted for the Author Book Award in Les Rencontres d’Arles 2018, nominated for the best Photography Book at PHotoESPANA 2018 and for the Kassel Photobook Award 2018.
As a visual artist I work with photography, text and video. With my work I investigate the relationship between myself and my subject. "The encounter" is a central concept here. In practice I combine a documentary approach with a search for my position as a storyteller. It focuses on a few questions: What is the real topic? Where is the thin line between finding and creating stories? Which (un) conscious strategies do I use as a maker in producing a story?
Currently Simoens is working on a project with his father and painter Richard Simoens.
Tu me dis
Tu me dis (2016) is a work I created during a residency at the Manual Rivera-Ortiz Foundation in Arles.
This work and book by the same name show an image sequence of the twenty-four hours I spent with an unknown woman. The publication included a letter the woman wrote to me afterwards. It offers an insight into my methodology as a maker and illustrates my personal search for access, intimacy, trust and collaboration from the subject’s perspective. The book was published by APE (Art Paper Editions) and was selected in 2017 for the Author Book Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles.