Visiting the group exhibition “Zwart” at Museum Kranenburgh in Bergen, The Netherlands, I was immediately drawn to the intruiging and puzzling work by Belgian photographer Tom Callemin.

His subjects loom up out of complete darkness. Bare and stripped of all frills. Charged.

It is their utter concentration that keeps me captive.

These images somehow feel familiar, yet, at the same time they disquiet me.

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Extract from Interview – Foam Talent: “The uneasy realisation of a model”

By Taco Hidde Bakker

The act of photography is performance in the work of Callemin, whether he works with people, animals or objects. Callemin’s own role is also brought into play, to an extent that the viewer of his work will be confronted with his own role vis-à-vis the model, but also the artist in whose place he has come to stand. “In photography a viewer always comes to replace the apparatus.” Callemin hopes that his careful and attractive compositions will create an experience within the viewer, but within that experience also a capsizing towards something more unsettling, perhaps through identification with the unease of the models, who usually are put to the test when collaborating with Callemin on the realisation of a photograph.