Pierre Vreyen

“Two tripods, two cameras and a mirror”

ARTIST STATEMENT

I made this photograph to make the viewer think, and wonder how it was all setup. Born and raised in Liege, Belgium. I moved to Magog, Quebec, Canada (70 miles or so South-East of Montreal) in 1990 where I bought my first camera. It was only in 1992, when I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, that I started using black and white film to be able to enjoy the whole process of making photographs from start to finish by myself. I set my first darkroom up in my apartment’s kitchen where I learned the ins and outs of printing on silver gelatin paper. Ever since then I’ve spent countless hours in the darkroom and have made thousands of silver gelatin prints. The darkroom has moved from the kitchen into the basement of the house I bought in 1998 though. A few years ago, I heard from a gallery owner of using platinum instead of silver to print pictures. Since then, I’ve learned the process of making platinum prints and have made many prints from my own images. Other photographers have also asked me to make platinum prints of their photographs.

Selected by Julian Cox, Curator of Photography and Chief Curator at the de Young Museum, San Francisco.