Carmen de Vos

A Poem dictated by the Corset #31 [From the series Mademoiselle Jean]

2007/2018

10 A Poem dictated by the Corset, 2007/2018 [From the series Mademoiselle Jean] This photo is in her book The Eyes of the Fox, 2018 Digital color print based on original Polaroid on pearl photo paper, not mounted Hand signed & numbered by the artist, edition of 7 - nr 01 Carmen De Vos - About the artist Flying Freelance Portrayer. Purveyor of Exquisite Photographic Peculiarities. Fabriqueur of Foxy Femmes. Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the late TicKL-Magazine. Author of THE EYES OF THE FOX, her beautiful, voluptuous photo book published by [ander]-zijds presenting a decade of curiously frivolous Polaroids. Belgian artist Carmen De Vos mingles highbrow etiquette with sly, subversive eroticism. Her Polaroids are refreshingly audacious and aesthetically wicked, pushing the viewers beyond the boundaries of ordinary life in a way that makes them do about anything to spend one more hour in that mad land of no rules where shameless and sensual women live their baroque fantasies. Enormously longing for what she’s afraid to loose: real human contact, the slowness of being and creating, the tangibility of materials. She is a slow photographer. She shoots Polaroids to frame these mental escapades, they get so easily out of hand. She never really gets cured from naughtiness and can’t help but traveling back to those blessed times of free-love photography with her Polaroids. Almost without exception she uses old Polaroid camera’s, long time expired film and self-made filters. Her tools and methods - such as film bleaching and deliberate film obstruction - are not precise and are not even geared towards a perfect representation. They often yield results - such as colorisation, deformation, unsharpness - which she could never have predicted on forehand with any certainty, because their flaws do not allow for calculation. She’s not in control. She fights the material. She plans, stages and directs but the decayed chemistry and off-focus lenses add their magic. All by themselves. Which merrily surprises her. Or ruins her image. This battle attracts her as much as it frustrates her. She loves to create within these limitations, to try to produce the best possible image within the narrow circumstances given. Luckily, she’s a sucker for imperfections. Carmen is frequently published in Belgian magazines and newspapers and in several international magazines. SOLO SHOWS 2018 - ANDERZIJDS - THE EYES OF THE FOX - Antwerpen, Belgium 2016 - TOERISMEKANTOOR KNOKKE HEIST - Knokke, Belgium - Amaluna’s Day Off 2016 - ENFANTS ART SPACE - Hamburg, Germany - Odd Stories 2014 - SCHIPPERSKAPEL - Brugge, Belgium - Odd Stories / (con) Sequences 2014 - DE WERF - Brugge, Belgium - Odd Stories 2012 - WUFTE VILLA - St Agatha...

Letters from Madame - Pinch, from the series mme.xposed, 2006, digital print based on a Polaroid, beautiful on Fine art Bright white by Hahnemuhle, mounted on Dibond - uncoated in ...

#Girl Manoeuvres - 01 from the series Dunderwear - 2007 26x20cm edition of 7 . Archival C-print based on the Polaroid , on beautiful on Fine art bright white by Hahnemuhle framed in a shadow Frame (white oiled wood) Hand signed & numbered by the artist. Carmen De Vos - Artist Statement Flying Freelance Portrayer. Purveyor of Exquisite Photographic Peculiarities. Chroniqueur and Archiver. Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the late TicKL-Magazine. The Belgian artist Carmen De Vos is a slow photographer. She registers, portrays and thinks up odd stories. She shoots Polaroids to frame these mental escapades, they get so easily out of hand. She enormously longs for what she’s afraid to loose: real human contact, the slowness of being and creating, the tangibility of materials. Almost without exception she uses old Polaroid camera’s, long time expired film and self-made filters. Her tools and methods - such as film bleaching and deliberate film obstruction - are not precise and are not even geared towards a perfect representation. They often yield results - such as colorisation, deformation, unsharpness - which she could never have predicted on forehand with any certainty, because their flaws do not allow for calculation. She’s not in control. She fights the material. She plans, stages and directs but the decayed chemistry and off-focus lenses add their magic. All by themselves. Which merrily surprises her. Or ruins her image. This battle attracts her as much as it frustrates her. She loves to create within these limitations, to try to produce the best possible image within the narrow circumstances given. Luckily, she’s a sucker for imperfections. Once upon a time she found herself guilty of home-crafted mischiefs for TicKL, her English art porn Polaroid magazine. She never really got cured from naughtiness. She can’t help but traveling back to these blessed times of free-love photography...

'Allegro Moderato' by Carmen De Vos (Odd Stories) - 1/25, 2014 mounted on black mdf, dimensions 15x11,3cm (the second image shows a sample piece mounted) hand signed by the artist on...

Aventure d'une libertine XII, Paris, 2015 From The Secret Album Series Edition 6/6 ex. 5 AP. Unframed The Secret Album Series This series is born from a personal experience. The model's husband told Uwe Ommer an idea: he wanted to watch his wife with other men hiding behind the curtains. This is how the series was born, with a more erotic style than the others. _______________________________ Born in Bergisch-Gladbach, Germany, Uwe Ommer became fascinated with photography at a young age. Initially sparked by his interest in photographing birds, he received his first camera at age 14 and began experimenting with his limited equipment. By the time Ommer was 18, he had given up on birds but was improving his skills as a photographer. He began working as an apprentice in a camera shop and soon picked up side projects for local papers, shooting everything from car accidents to weddings, when staff photographers were unavailable. In 1962, Ommer was awarded the first Deutscher Jugend Photo Preis (German Youth Photo Prize) at Photokina 1962 for his photograph of children playing soccer. The following year, he left for Paris (for only one year to learn French, he insisted) and began working as an assistant to advertising photographer Jean Pierre Ronzel. While Ommer did perfect his French, he never did leave Paris. In 1966 he opened his own photography studio, primarily shooting fashion and advertising photos for small women’s magazines. Quickly gaining respect for his work in Paris, Ommer began showing in local galleries and eventually published his first book. In 1995, Ommer drastically changed gears and decided to embark on a project unlike anything he had ever done before – a project, unlike anything anyone had ever done before. As a personal challenge, he set out the following year to document all types of families on every continent at the turn of the millennium. With a Landrover, Rolleiflex camera...

EMMA SUMMERTON (*1970, Australia) Messages 17:19, 2023 Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper in white distance frame Sheet 23.2 x 27.4 cm (9 1/8 x 10 3/4 in.) Frame 24.6 x 28.7 ...

Aventure d'une libertine I, Paris, 2015 From The Secret Album Series Edition 6/6 ex. 5 AP. Unframed The Secret Album Series This series is born from a personal experience. The mode...

EMMA SUMMERTON (*1970, Australia) Messages 09:19, 2023 Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle paper in white distance frame Sheet 27.4 x 23.2 cm (10 3/4 x 9 1/8 in.) Frame 28.7 x 24.6 ...