绝美自然摄影集 / Marnix Goossens

非常感谢 Marnix Goossens 将项目介绍和项目图片授权gooood发行。更多请至： Marnix Goossens on gooood 
Appreciation towards Marnix Goossens for providing the following description:

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A Glimpse of Character

The behaviour of leaves can be quite surprising. Clustered on a tree or bush, following some inaudible rhythm; or, once again clustered, this time off the tree, while the apples are still ‘up there” among the branches. Colourful petals evoke a range of illusions: red paint splashed onto a grey-pebbled path or a woolly pink bath mat spread out under a venerable old tree. In the realm of what passes for ‘nature’, leaves may be the proverbial light¬weights, but they are unpredictable, versatile; whatever moves them remains a mystery.

Marnix Goossens’ approach is apparently one of calm and preci¬sion. He focuses his camera on objects and scenes familiar to us all: landscapes and interiors; quotidian objects; himself and his friends. Goossens is—like all of us, in fact—an observer. He watches what goes on around him, how life plays out, and how events evolve. He watches calmly and precisely. Things happen that surpass the ordinary. By watching closely, a different meaning is unveiled—a greater meaning, a more enduring meaning. And by watching so attentively, Goossens enables us to do exactly the same. At times, he shows us ‘secret’ formal associations between objects and human beings; at other times, dead objects seem to come alive spontaneously, when no one is looking. Occasionally, we don’t really know what we are seeing; we experience a moment of powerful promise just before recognizing what is in front of us. Explaining this greater, more enduring meaning is not Goossens’ intention. He prefers meaning to remain unclear, elusive, like a dark shadow in an obscure alley. After all, what is the meaning of an old mattress with a slightly sagging seam, a radiator in the background seeming to accentuate its tired, drooping line? In the context of life, probably not much at all; but within the four corners of the frame it feels like a small miracle—a miracle only in the visual sense; a miracle photographers, painters, and film-makers can see and show; a miracle words can barely touch.

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Goossens takes his time to produce his photographs; these are therefore anything but the recording of a moment. Rather, they are moments stretched out in time, the time it took to create the photos—their composition, framing, and exposure—is solidi¬fied in the images. The subjects in the portraits, for example, do not look surprised or interrupted in their activities but are merely waiting; they are past the point of feeling uncomfort¬able, and their expressions are natural. The objects Goossens has captured are sometimes in rather unusual places: a melon on a couch, a towel up a tree; despite this, it feels as though the objects have adjusted to their new surroundings. Illuminated by morning sunlight, a vase of plastic flowers on a windowsill seems to capture the essence of an entire morning. We often think of photography as a ‘fast’ medium, but in Goossens’ work, the dust has time to settle.

The subjects of Goossens’ photographs are quite common, so common that they have been adopted by artists throughout the ages: still lifes, portraits, self-portraits, landscapes, interiors. We know this, and he knows we know this. The images are therefore combined in our mind’s eye: when we look at one of Goossens’ portraits of a woman, for example, we indeed see  seventeenth-century lady posed against a dark background, the folds of her modest garments beautifully lit. We notice that Goossens, like many painters past and present, uses his portraiture to experiment with light and composition. The careful observation, the illusion of stopping time, the resonance of old-Master images—these characteristics turn Goossens’ work into photographic paintings.

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And what about nature? Nature does play a significant role in Goossens’ work, but not in the way in which we are accustomed. Our traditional relationship with nature is, in fact, strange. We see nature as the source of everything—of our well-being, peace and calm, health and healing—but we do not hesitate to ‘plasticize’ nature. We depict the natural world on our biscuit tins, we print it on our wallpaper, and we embroider it on our bed sheets. The way we represent nature is very telling, not so much about nature itself, but about how we project our feelings and desires—and therefore ourselves—onto nature.

In Goossens’ work, nature appears in many forms: ‘plasticized’, embroidered, projected, and real. Often, nature appears as screens of foliage, either distant or in extreme close-up. Goossens deliberately obscures—and sometimes even sabotages—the distinction between original and fake. He depicts a bouquet of artificial flowers as if it were composed of the prettiest wildflowers; he looks at a waterfall in the jungle as if it could be a poster in a travel agency. His quest is neither for authenticity, nor for the source of things, nor for beauty in its own right; his search is for a particular personality. He will not allow nature to fool him, but he is aware of nature’s attempt to do just that. He also observes nature’s hapless efforts and failures to trick us—a cloud, hiding in the bushes, expressing a deep desire to become a bush; or a shrub, pretending to have been drawn into existence using fierce but firm strokes, rather than having been grown from a seed. Goossens demonstrates our strange and limited relationship with nature. He does not simply point out that we project ourselves onto nature, therefore limiting our ways of seeing the natural world. Instead, he shows us that what we project is merely one-dimensional. He shows us that nature has so much more that is human—and that is so much more human-like coincidence, humour, failure, self-denial, insecurity, and hubris.

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Goossens tries from his subjects to steal a glimpse of character.
No matter how hard trees, people, flowers, or curtains try to present themselves in a certain way, there are always the telltale signs of their true selves, even though these selves may have been inspired by alienating circumstances. When observing himself, Goossens wants to see more, as well, and seeks to capture the invisible moment when posing becomes exposing. Capturing that moment requires calm and precision; it requires embracing clichés, and discarding them; most of all, it requires silence.

So it is no surprise that his photographs articulate silence. In Goossens’ portraits, people are quiet, almost holding their breath. In the landscapes, the trees, the leaves, the clouds, the water—except for the gentle murmur of a stream—are quiet. In interiors, the curtains, the flowers, the bench, the wall—all are as quiet, as still as a Vermeer painting. We are aware of this silence, for even if we could hear, there would hardly be a sound. We are aware of it because images as pure as these require very few words indeed: all that happens can be expressed through form, colour, and light. It is a light that exposes without mercy and satisfies the eye, a light that also protects, covers, allows things to remain hidden.

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叶舞也惊鸿。树繁茂叶片无声之奏，苹果依然在树梢间。色彩缤纷的花瓣引人遐想：是泼墨红漆于灰色卵石小路，或是老树下的粉色垫子。自然之境，“叶”轻盈却无常，它们就是迷。

摄影师Marnix Goossens用他平静精准的镜头捕捉日常镜像，景观，室内，人物。他是一个观察者，冷静的看待事物变化，找到非平常的切入点，揭示自然与人类的“秘密”。那些画面自然而然，水到渠成。Marnix Goossens不追求宏观叙事，他更爱小巷的难以捉摸值得深味的阴影。生活有许多小奇迹，Marnix Goossens就披露出这些奇迹。

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Marnix Goossens运用时间酝酿照片。照片是时间的叠合，取景，曝光，选题，无一例外，但又恰到好处，浑然天成。即便是沙发上的毛巾也在他的镜头下变得特别。晨光中窗台上塑料花瓶反映出整个上午的本质。和我们认为的瞬间摄影不同，Marnix Goossens的摄影具有时间性。

Marnix Goossens的摄影主题普通，古往今来，已被艺术家们运用无数次：静物，肖像，字画。众所周知，他也心知肚明。因此他的图像与我们的心一点即通。与古往绘画艺术拥有相似之处。

什么是自然？自然在Marnix Goossens工作中以我们陌生的方式发挥着显著作用。我们与自然的关系并非正常，但我们能从中窥到本质。我们用各种方式表达我们对自然的认知：比如我们的墙纸，我们的床单。但这个表达更多带有我们的主观情感。Marnix Goossens的摄影作品中出现许多自然，其中关于叶子的最多，无论是远景还是特写，有的时候他也可以模糊人工与自然的界限，比如用人造花冒充最美丽的野花。这些作品有的像旅行社的海报，不真实，不为了自己，他只是在寻找一个特定的本质，一个他不会的含混的。有的时候他还用大自然的景象拍出错视性画面，比如草丛后的云朵，看起来像灌木。这不是大自然，这只是一个方式去看大自然，图像展现仅仅是一维。这种类似与人类世界的巧合预示着幽默，错失，否定，危机感，狂妄。

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Marnix Goossens试图从他的对象中提炼出特性树木，人，鲜花，还有窗帘，都有真实一面，但Marnix Goossens要求自己看得更多，扑捉与无形，揭示与瞬间，在冷静和精确的捕捉背后，是沉默。

因此，这是沉默的作品。人们屏住呼吸的安静。景观，树木，树叶，云朵，水：温柔而安静，室内的窗帘，鲜花，墙壁，也侧地的安静。这是一种超然听力之外的沉默，色和光表达一切。开放果断和渴望的眼睛将隐藏的光笼络。

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