Katrien de Blauwer Belgium, b. 1969

I would like to describe myself as a “photographer without a camera”

Whatever you do, don’t tell Katrien de Blauwer that she makes collages: “Let's say I’m a photographer without a camera. For me, cutting is comparable to clicking on the shutter release”. She snips, glues, assembles, infringes, colors and handles photographs from the old magazines she collects. Close to photomontage or film editing, her works conceal an intense narrative charge. They are linked to memory and personal history, but, paradoxically, as intimate as they are anonymous, they become the possible scenario of everyone. “What Katrien de Blauwer unearths in her black and white images is the archaeology of ambiguity. She doesn't cut this ambiguity of desire with a raging knife: on the contrary, it interests her. She works it to the maximum. She refines and sharpens it” (Philippe Azoury).