If love calls I won’t let you in

Vincent Delbrook The naive Belgian photographer went to Cuba in search of peace and colour, but he also found someone he loved there. He had visited the country once in the late 1990s, but he wanted more than just documentaries of the city and its residents. He was looking for beauty, tools to express himself, to show in spontaneous images a sense of life that he had just experienced.

It’s hard to fit exactly what the artist does into one category. if we look on your website The different compositions, the effects of painting and drawing are obvious: he experiments with different supports, makes prints, collages, uses typographies, emotion and color vibrate everywhere.

revival not yet seen

Havana is one of the most photographed cities. We can immediately imagine these images: somewhere in the background there is an incredibly green (or red or yellow) old American car, the skin of the characters shining from the sun, one of them stares into the camera. Perhaps the ocean is still lapping at the jetty in the background, the wind is blowing heat between the dilapidated buildings, and sooner or later a dog or cat will appear. It is quite clear that a photographer of some kind in the 21st century cannot fall into a trap full of vulgar words.

In fact, the easiest way to avoid this trap is to not go there. But you can also hear that if someone goes to Cuba, they often go back there. In a way, this country – but Havana in particular – gets into the minds of foreigners and tempts many of them to stay. Vincent Delbrück, stage name VD, loves shooting in places where he feels at home, he has been visiting Cuba since 1997 and used to call it the country he adopted. He has thought about settling there several times, but he sees that it is not good to live in Cuba now, the country has been completely destroyed by the regime, Cuba is dying under the dictatorship, but one day it will be reborn, according to him.

Reality and toned down rum

The artist emphasizes that what we see is not a documentary image, although it contains reality, the point of view is more than fictional and intentionally gives way to impressions of the moment. the shampoo The series of photos was an accident at first.

One Monday afternoon in 2018, he found a group of teenagers walking through the streets and parks of Cerro La Víbora. During her photographic activities, she consciously moved away from the center of Havana and immediately fell in love with these parks, lush and leafy neighborhoods. Here, too, young people hang out all day, during school hours, not after. Clinging to each other’s company, they live the final period before becoming adults: they kiss, smoke, talk and drink bamboo (diluted rum).

The teenagers, who could be the same age as the photographer’s divorced son, accepted VD’s presence and did not make it out of the room when the camera went off, but continued to do what they were doing. The images were also not displayed on the screen of the device, since they were made from analog raw materials, the films were always placed in the developer between two trips, in Belgium, and only then was it clear what kind of images were taken.

The artist points out, if he can, that in this case it is a bit strange, but among the youth of La Víbora it has completely dissolved. He became a member of the company and, in addition to taking pictures, he also had fun with them when there was a party. That spontaneous encounter on Monday turned into a real relationship that filled every day together, and feelings inevitably developed. This experience was so captivating that she ended up getting married in Cuba during the project. Later he took Helen with him to Belgium, but the age difference and the distant cultures eventually ended the marriage and she returned to her country.

life sucks

The series is actually a flow of vibrant and colorful images, made up of dialogues and associative connections with images and still lifes, and its final forms are one-of-a-kind art books and prints. The End of Photo Projects is becoming more and more of an art book. Galleries have not lost importance, but commercial or organizational aspects prevail there, which is perfectly normal, but not all artists and projects work well, regardless of their quality. In the case of photographs, a book is more useful for the long-term existence of photographs, self-published books, and complete artistic freedom.

Part of the book is also a diary-type short story divided into chapters. Text written by Oriss Abreu Pavie, Member of the Company silly life The title of the article came from the opening lines of the seven-chapter tale: “When love knocked on my door, I refused to let it in. I turned my back on the involuntary effect of the feelings that had aroused in my body. , I took a step back before I started to feel what seemed strange, because at that time I didn’t know that I was actually born at that time, and that even when I was still fighting him, it was obvious that there was a Voltio…”

there are only moments

VD adamantly refuses to create his own works based on concepts and, according to his own words, hates ideas and themes in photography. According to him, all of this just leads to concepts that if you don’t learn them, you won’t be good at what you do, and therefore it doesn’t make sense to him. Instead, believing in obsession and passion, he is interested in creations that he does not think about, but that he feels. It is no coincidence that spirituality or love appear in his works, which have a free transit between the external and internal world of him. He doesn’t believe in the documentary because the working method also has aspects from which in the end some kind of conclusion has to be reached. He reminds me of another article we wrote about nightlife in Moscow. The author of the images, Igor Baranchuk, also rejects the documentary, drawing our attention to the fact that the place consisting of the images of him does not really exist, and cannot be found, because there are only moments.

The last time we exchanged messages, it turns out that Vincent Delbrück is celebrating his 47th birthday this weekend. Thanks, that’s fine! Meanwhile, he has a new girlfriend and is more in love than ever.