The Myth of the Photographer as Neutral Recorder & Other Stories

Max Pinckers is an award-winning artist based in Brussels, Belgium, whose work explores visual storytelling strategies in documentary photography and the relationships between aesthetics, images and meaning-making. From Japan to India, Thailand and Kenya to North Korea and the USA, his work covers a range of themes, subjects and spaces, and is realised primarily as self-published artist books and exhibition installations such as The Fourth Wall (2012) and Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty (2014) comprising of photographs from India, and Red Ink (2018) featuring work from North Korea.

Speaking of his experiences photographing in India for his two projects – The Fourth Wall and Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty – Pinckers will expand on his approach to documentary photography that emphasises the subjectivity of the artist. Although he believes in extensive research and diligent technical preparation prior to commencing a project, Pinckers stresses on the need for improvisation to obtain lively, unexpected, critical, simultaneously poetic and documentary images. From tales of the serendipitous to the theatricality of the everyday, encounters on the street to staged tableaux, his talk will explore both the stories that lie within photographs, and the ones behind their making.

Pinckers’ work is strongly grounded in the local contexts of its creation – The Fourth Wall focuses on life in Mumbai and the Hindi film industry, while Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty explores the contradictions of romance in India in the 21st century, documenting the paradoxical realities of popular perceptions, expectations and representations of love in the country. In the latter, Pinckers also turns his lens upon the Love Commandos, an outfit that attempts to help runaway couples not only with practical affairs such as marriage registration but also by providing refuge and helping them avoid violent retribution for their perceived transgression. Reflecting on this and other socio-cultural realities, as well as delving into his artistic practice and processes, Pinckers will examine the ways in which we choose to represent the world and construct the real.

The talk will be followed by a brief conversation between Max Pinckers & Shilpa Vijayakrishnan from the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP).

This event, organised by MAP in collaboration with the BIC, is supported by the MurthyNAYAK Foundation.

The Museum of Art & Photography’s (MAP) mission is to build, manage and sustain a new museum to exhibit, interpret and preserve a growing collection of art and cultural artefacts, motivated by a belief that museums should play a positive role in society. It seeks to bridge art and community and serve as a catalyst for greater public exposure to the important cultural history of the visual arts in the country.