It always matters to be in the right place at the right time. Life consists of a great number of coincidences, and my meeting with Roger is one of them. The fact that I had to find myself in a completely different part of the world to find out about Roger has always come to me as a most striking characteristic, especially since both of us originate from the same country. But then again, I was moving in very different fields in my homeland, and only gave bloom to my passion for photography after leaving the ancestral grounds behind me.

From the first time I came in contact with Roger's work, which he showed me on a visit to Turkey last year, trhe impression of getting drawn into a profoundly pleasant visual journey has never left me. The reason underlying this emotional condition lies not so much in the esthetic aspect of what his photographs represent, the content is intentionally of secondary importance, but in the way the image evolves around a three-dimensional structure.

As a specialist of photography conservation and restoration, a subject he is also teaching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerpen, Roger chooses for the stability and longevity of platinum-palladium paper to print his works. The characteristic of this paper manifests itself in such a way that its completely matt surface does not allow for any distraction by reflective light. As a consequence, the image draws the unconditional attention of the spectator, automatically fulfilling the primary intention of the photographer. The astounding richness in tonal subtility of the platinum-palladium printing process intensely highlights the play of shadow and light, giving the image a feel of another dimension that once again succeeds in evoking the impulse for the spectator to draw closer and explore.

Altough randomness has been the primary concern in Roger's earlier works, the successive exposures and their arrangement within each image of "Composite Images" are of a strictly predetermined nature. The arrangement of consecutive negatives construct the entity of the image, but because of a slightly distorted position of each individual part in relation to the others, it fragments the same entity. The natural reflex of the eye to pull the image together as a whole takes the spectator to an even more increased level of curiosity. The wandering eye embarks on a profound exploration that will eventually bring about the discovery of the landscape within the landscape, the image within the image, a point of take-off to a three dimensional journey.

"Composite Images" can take the spectator along many different paths of interpretation. It takes a highly inventive spirit to convey a photographic intention by playing on various human conditions, to make the spectator discover, naturally, the landscapes of the artists mind.

Christel Roelans, august 1997 - EKLISIA artist residency, Gümüslük, Turkey.

 

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