Video:
Max Pinckers – Margins of Excess
On the occasion of Max Pinckers’ exhibition at FOMU, VRT is showing the documentary ‘Max Pinckers – Margins of Excess’. Watch as Pinckers travels across the US investigating the blurred line between fiction and reality in the American media.
Max Pinckers is a Belgian photographer. In 2016 he and his Canadian wife Victoria Gonzalez-Figueras set off on a road trip through the US. He wants to take photos there for a new book, ‘Margins of Excess’.
The photos with which Pinckers returns to Belgium months later appear at first sight to be spontaneous moments. A boy lying lifeless on the ground in the middle of a deserted three-lane road. An undertaker in front of an open coffin. Three long-haired teenagers on a fallen tree. The images are immediately intriguing. But when you study them more closely, you sense that something is not right.
The cadence is too good. The composition is too correct. And the light feels unnatural. In short, the whole scene seems staged. Which, in most cases, it is. Because almost every photo by Pinckers is preceded by days of research. Or at least an intensive thought process.
This video will be available through Friday 11 March 2022.