Blow-Up:

In legendary sixties London Thomas strolls through Maryon Park. As a fashion photographer, he finds himself in the right city at the right time, but in a park, that feverish air dissipates. It is still early morning. Drawn by the way the light hits the trees and bushes his hands find his camera and he begins to photograph them. He also captures a couple embracing in the distance. The moment the woman notices, she demands the roll of film. Thomas makes himself scarce. 

When, later that day, the woman finds him once more, Thomas fobs her off with the wrong negatives. What in heaven’s name could be on them? Once in the dark room, he discovers that he was likely witness to a murder. That night he returns to the park and indeed finds a body, but why was he stupid enough to leave his camera at home? Upon his return he finds his studio has been ransacked. All photographs and negatives have disappeared. His archive, his entire existence as a photographer has been erased. In vein, he seeks comfort at a friend’s party. The fact that none other than the Yardbirds are playing, and that Jeff Beck ruins his guitar in a theatrical fashion barely moves him. Besides, the body seems to have disappeared entirely the next day. Instead, a colourful troupe of mime players turn up, performing a tennis match. They appear to be hitting a ball out of the court. Thomas picks up the non-existent ball and throws it back at the players. 

Film connaisseurs will identify this piece, without hesitation, as Blow-Up, a masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni. This influential film dating back to 1966 with its whirlwind narrative ends unsatisfactorily, in the traditional sense, partly because the budget got out of hand, but the image of London in the swinging sixties with its surrender to impulse released so much that the film won first prize at Cannes alongside a number of Oscars, and even freed the American critics from their puritan slant. The film made enough dollars, a misanthropist might say, and the fact that a new style of filming was born was merely collateral. 

Coen Dekkers is in many ways Antonioni’s heir. The title Blow-Up instantly rings a bell. Although the content has sunk to the bottom of his recollection, he even confuses it with Don’t Look Now, which is as muddled but set in Venice, Antonioni’s wandering camerawork fits him like a glove. Dekkers has developed a similar style of photography, in which he constantly combines two related images. The shortest possible film, one might say. And what is revealed by the interaction between these two images is as shady as the grizzly blow-up in the bushes of Maryon Park. 

Zigzagging Camera:

Let us be detectives, just like Thomas. Dekkers, in his own words, practices two disciplines: street- and model photography. At first glance the genres are contradictory, but to him the street and the studio are comparable hunting terrains. Why, we will find out later. First let’s touch on a few common frameworks.

Street photography is based on coincidence. On the gift of isolating a striking moment from a stream of events. Henry Cartier-Bresson spoke of ‘the deciding moment’. See his photo of a little man jumping across a much-too-large puddle. There he is – floating in mid-air, temporarily released from reality – yet you know that he will inexorably be getting wet socks. In effect, Cartier-Bresson demonstrates that a street photographer must have a foreseeing eye. He does not direct his characters, but chooses his position as best he can and pre-sets his camera. The moment caught is less coincidental than one might think. It obviously requires psychological insight and sleight of hand.

Model photography, on the other hand, relies on utmost control. The model knows what is expected and has been styled to create a specific atmosphere. The photographer works in a studio setting where he controls nearly all factors. He directs the postures of the characters. places them in a set, determines the lighting and chooses the crop. 

Afterwards, from dozens of variations, he chooses the ideal photograph. 

However different both these disciplines may be, Coen Dekkers combines them because he tries to be led by the moment, as intuitively as possible. The one-eyed camera zigzags through the air, brushing buildings and passers-by. Like an insect, he approaches the model right to the skin, only to retreat at the last moment. His foreknowledge lies in the fact that he knows he will be placing two related images next to one another, whereby the shift in time and position will be minimal. A hand wanders, an eye opens, a head turns, a step or two are taken, an angle and the background alter slightly. Almost all photographers in the world choose the best, the most characteristic, the decisive moment from the series. Coen Dekkers, however, is not looking for such a form of essence. He seeks the ungraspable. He seeks that which constantly slips away from us. He places two moments together which in themselves are not that special, which often don’t meet the accepted aesthetic criteria, but which, when combined, capture something: the hidden, the unsecured, the unposed, the rarely or never revealed life that is near-impossible to catch. Everything revolves around the question of whether a deeper reality is just beyond our grasp.  

Inspirations:

Is that what Antonioni was looking for? Perhaps he stumbled upon it by accident. In the final scenes his playful approach is exaggerated in a poetic fashion. The ball that is, in effect, thrown, sparks our curiosity. Where might it land? How far will it roll? Life is inimitable, strange and not without danger, but also a carnaval of temptation. En passant he lets us share in the magic. Even a grizzly blow-up can lead to an exciting discovery. Eventually he poses the question of whether we actually want to know how the plot fits together. Is it not wiser to play along and pretend?

Coen Dekkers navigates this intuitive, tentative territory. “The camera is a fantastic tool to optimise concentration”, he says. “Photography forces you to be 100% present, with everything you’ve got.” But he refuses to to deeper into his drives. He prefers to keep ‘the source’ subconscious, by which he implies that originality requires a certain naivety. This does not make a person unworldly. We are formed by a host of influences, although Dekkers attempts to limit these consciously. In photography he has affinity with outsiders such as Gerard Fieret and Arnold Odematt (a baker turned police photographer) but also with one of the undisputed greats like Cindy Sherman who lifted role-play to an art form. 

“I actually look more at art than at photography,” he says. “In the Jeu de Paume (Paris) I was once gripped by Claude Monet. His repeated approach to the ‘Cathedral of Rouen’ aligns with the idea that you mustn’t search for one all-defining image, but for the short-lived moment that arises for a fraction of a second in all its intensity, yet always differently. Various painters such as Velasquez, Francis Bacon and last but not least Rogier van der Weyden have helped me in numerous ways. I visited the Lamentation of Christ in the Mauritshuis several times during the public restoration in 2018. Van der Weyden presents the Descent from the Cross not as an objective story but as an emotional event. Painters are capable of that.”

Desire and comfort zone:

Like many photographers, Coen Dekkers likes to travel. The last ten years in Eastern Europe, before that he explored Asia and the Americas. Through his work as a tutor of Industrial Design he has been involved in the personal quest young people embark on for thirty years. The incessant search is a common thread in his existence. This directly relates to his method of constantly presenting two images. “I want to walk around things, observing them from different angles. It would be untruthful to choose a single moment from that. What I look for lies in a moment in between. Just as music is not merely a stream of sounds, but also requires moments of silence.”

“Yes, desire is a feeling that suits me. Perhaps stemming from an inability to connect with the current time. I cherish classical music and I often play Schubert for good reason. I seek a sublimation of the ordinary. A way of dreaming out of reality, also aesthetically. But through the camera I return to the closest possible distance. I take my close-ups from half a metre away. I want to touch things, as it were, and with a wide angle lens (28 to 35 mm) I’m right inside it. So yes, I enter into the comfort zone, but not offensively. We talk, there’s an atmosphere of mutual trust.”