Harry Gruyaert: Between Worlds

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his work. 'Threshold images', shot in front of or behind an obstruction, is one of those recurring themes. The My father was a spy during the Cold War. Bilingual in German and English, he worked for the U.S. Air Force and sent agents into East Germany and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain in the early 1960s. The Need to Know, a photo book, is my exploration of the meager details that emerged from brief and cryptic conversations with my father and my curiosity about Cold War espionage and its impact upon my family at the time. The book will be published by the Blow Up Press of Warsaw, Poland in early October. on display in a shop window versus the grey reality of the street it reflects or walkers on sunny platforms versus Arthur Tress (b. 1940) is a singular figure in the landscape of postwar American photography. His seminal series, The Dream Collector, depicts Tress’s interests in dreams, nightmares, fantasies, and the unconscious and established him as one of the foremost proponents of magical realism at a time when few others were doing staged photography. In ‘Between Worlds’ Gruyaert experiments with bringing together different layers, depths, surfaces, light levels and colour palettes in one frame. This results in dense and highly complex images that confuse the eye and are difficult to fathom. The contrast between the empty room and the lively world outside as seen in the Mali picture is furthermore an illustration of how Gruyaert plays with juxtaposing different realities and dimensions of human experience. A cold and rainy empty street versus the cozy ambiance of a bar interior, colourful consumer goods on display in a shop window versus the grey reality of the street it reflects or walkers on sunny platforms versus lonely passengers in a train about to depart: as writer and curator David Campany puts it in his introduction of the book accompanying this exhibition, these images are all “made at those complicated yet poetic points between worlds.”

A simpler image from Gao, Mali, in 1988 simply shows a vacant room, a glassless window, some fabric blowing in what is perhaps a breeze, a vacant red chair, and through the window opening people walking on a dirt street. The green walls the red chair are a compositionally wonderful pairing, the frame within a frame of the glassless window isolates the narrative outside. Light coming in from another window in a different wall illuminates the chair. So many stories in one frame. There is so much movement and color. Harry Gruyaert‘s embrace of color photography set him ahead of many contemporaries in Europe at a time when the medium was widely seen as most applicable to the realm of commercial and advertising photography. Yet Gruyaert’s interest in colour was not the only thing that set him apart from his peers, as he explained in an interview with The British Journal of Photography: “In Europe and especially France, there’s a humanistic tradition of people lik e Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis where the most important thing is the people, not so much the environment. I admired it, but I was never linked to it. I was much more interested in all the elements: the decor and the lighting and all the cars: the details were as important as humans. That’s a different attitude altogether.” Gruyaert's focus on the interplay between people and their environments has also influenced a new generation of street photographers, who seek to tell stories not only through human interactions but also through the context in which they take place. Photographers such as Dotan Saguy and Jonas Bendiksen have followed in Gruyaert's footsteps, exploring the connections between people, culture, and urban landscapes in their work. As a reviewer, it is hard to write anything not already said more eloquently in David Campany’s excellent essay. Rarely has the marriage of written word and expansive visual risk-taking been so satisfying. Between Worldsis thus best enjoyed by embracing his excitement for the power of color, shape, timing, discovery. Through Gruyaert’s eyes, and the brilliant editing of Between Worlds, we seek not answers to what we are looking at. Rather, we delight in being presented with intriguing and playful questions. Harry Gruyaert is known for his preference for small, unobtrusive cameras that allow him to blend into his surroundings and capture candid moments. Some of the gear he has used throughout his career includes:Harry Gruyaert: India" brings together 150 images from the photographer's travels across India over more than thirty years. Featuring his trademark use of color, Gruyaert captures the people and places of the subcontinent in a manner that transcends stereotypes. From bustling cities to modest villages, this collection reveals some of the many faces of India through Gruyaert's unparalleled vision. Gruyaert is an intuitive photographer, wandering and shooting without destination nor preconceived idea, except

for his focus on composition, color and light. Unconsciously there are, however, certain motifs that often recur in Harry Gruyaert" is the first retrospective of the pioneering work of Harry Gruyaert. Gruyaert revolutionized creative and experimental uses of color in the 1970s and 1980s. His emotive, non-narrative, and boldly graphic way of perceiving the world influenced both cinema and American photographers. This volume provides a superb overview of Gruyaert's personal quest for freedom of expression and the liberation of the senses, featuring 80 color illustrations. Harry Gruyaert is a renowned Belgian street photographer, best known for his vivid use of color and his ability to capture the essence of a place through his lens. Born in 1941 in Antwerp, Gruyaert has spent the majority of his career traveling the world, documenting various cultures and landscapes. His unique style has placed him among the greats of street photography, such as Alex Webb or Joel Meyerowitz. As a photographer who “hates feeling trapped”, Gruyaert rarely photographs interiors. Rather he looks through mirrors and windows, offering graphic slices of city life that intersect with gestures of intimacy and isolation. Sunlight pours in to darkened churches and restaurants; trees impose shadows on brightly painted facades; the lines of doorways and other man-made structures create pictures within pictures; human figures walk ghostly in and out of frame.And perhaps airports offer a man-made equivalent to the globe’s coastlines. Airports are neither here nor there. Glass, steel, concrete – and accordlingly very much real, they are nonetheless in limbo, as are those who move through them. Below we reproduce Gruyaert’s introductory text from Last Call, along with a selection of images from the book. Gruyaert's play with illusion and perception throws the viewer off balance. The depicted obstructions create