Geprojecteerde gevoelens tegenover iets of iemand / Projected Feelings Toward Something or Somebody
1974
Photographie
Materials: dia-projection
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp / Donated by Estate Hugo Roelandt, Antwerp (Inv. no. S0575_0009).
From the beginning he [Roelandt] wasn’t interested in traditional narrative art photography, but in manipulating the reality in front of the camera. In 1974 he made a remarkable series of self-portraits entitled Feelings, in which he photographed his own face expressing, often in an exaggerated manner, a wide range of emotions. Around the same time he also made a series of photographic self-portraits in which he adopted, dressed in women’s clothes, provoking and seductive postures. These early examples of what we would now call ‘transgender awareness’ were made more or less simultaneously with self-portraits in drag by artists like Jürgen Klauke (whose work Roelandt knew thanks to Roger D’Hondt of the New Reform Gallery). But they also refer to the procession of the ‘Voil Jeanetten’ (men in women’s clothing) during the carnival in his home town of Aalst – a carnival he attended every year of his life. (Marc Holthof, 2016)
“A ce moment j'ai pris des photos mais j'ai refusé de photographier ce qui était devant moi, ce qui était là. Ce qui m'intéressait, c'était de transformer tout à fait consciemment certaines situations et de les consigner. La photographie était un bon moyen d'y parvenir. A terme, changer les choses est devenu plus important que la photographie elle-même et il en faut donc peu pour passer à des événement 'en direct'. (…)” — Interview avec Hugo Roelandt par Luc Mishalle, dans CET-Bulletin, 1980, n°5, p. 4- 6
