‘What is presented as evidence remains evidence, whether the observing eye qualifies itself as being subjective or objective’ – Trinh T. Minh-ha

Lavinia Wouters photographed the various sites and routes of human trafficking between Brussels and the coast not once, but twice. With two different intentions and, as a result, with two different cameras. The first time she did so as a house photographer with the federal police, working on a handbook for detectives in the field. Her photos, taken with a fast digital SLR camera, served not as evidence, but as visual aids, as illustrations.

Wouters had to photograph as many landmarks as possible of the places where smugglers were working. Sometimes she made overview images, other times she focused on details. Things that could somehow provide insight into their methods. These are images that describe straightforwardly, that refer very directly to specific locations: parking lots and gas stations, but also roadsides and fences. Nothing within the frame of those first images demands attention, nor is there anything to suggest anything. There is no regard for form or aesthetics; there is only the almost laconic essentiality of the photograph.

For Wouters, it was deeply affecting to realize what was going on at night in those at first sight perfectly redeemable highway parking lots. Knowing what she now knew, she could no longer view those places with the same gaze. So she went a second time, this time from her position as artistic photographer, trying to capture what Walter Benjamin called the anonymous physiognomy of the landscape.

The technical camera, the steadfast instrument with which Wouters now made her images, offers a broader perspective. To begin with, the camera does not allow itself to be rushed. Even as it is being set up, the predetermined image makes a certain impression on the photographer. In addition, the larger negative absorbs more information than the human eye can immediately process, small details that are moreover amplified here by their presentation in light boxes. Consequently, the framing is done more thoughtfully; there is more order and balance in the image. The technical camera has a greater spatial range, both visually and mentally.

What she did not do in her digital photographs for the police, Wouters does here: she guides the viewer’s gaze in a way that creates meaning. This creates tension in the image. Thin, oblique shadows line railroad tracks; curling barbed wire guides the gaze along containers to the point where the open sea and the quay meet on the horizon—the view of the horizon in her images is often either bounded or directed by fences; a road sends the eye past a high fence toward a single white-orange danger cone on the other side of the white gate; an upturned fence leads to a bridge, which in turn leads to a dirt road; a flattened patch of grassland at a corner of a fence, near a truck parking lot. Wouters no longer photographs places, but circumstances, conditions associated with those places.

When she later continues the project, Wouters takes her subjective style even further. In addition to large holes in fences, she also pays attention to abandoned belongings and clothing. Gradually, they come into focus more and more rigorously, especially when Wouters once again brings in the digital camera in addition to the technical camera. A deck of cards in the sand photographed from above and up close; close-ups of gloves and hats, as well as medicines and identification bracelets. Piece by piece they are tangible signs of lives, of identities, of people with a lot of hope and survival instinct. Wouters photographs them harshly and intimately at the same time.

The marks are there. They are effectively what they are. As long as no one touches or removes them, they remain unchangeable in their factuality. However, Wouters’ work, as well as the particular way it was created, shows that photography is still capable of more than merely registering them. When the photographer manages to add his personal feelings to the document, the scope of his pictures reaches beyond the objective facts. Therein lies not only the meaning, but also the art.

A short essay for the newsprint that accompanies delocation / the map is not the territory, part of an exhibition by Lavinia Wouters at Cultuurcentrum Mechelen (06.09.2018 – 04.11.2018).