Albert Pepermans Journal Brut
For this tenth edition of PhotoBrussels Festival, Albert Pepermans presents a selection of works from his ongoing series Journal Brut.
Initiated in 2013, Journal Brut emerged from an unorthodox engagement with photography. Its title explicitly refers to the homonymous cycle of stories by Ivo Michiels, conceived as an experimental diary. Like Michiels’ literary project, Pepermans’ work does not function as documentation, but as an open-ended, investigative form.
The series is based on Pepermans’ own snapshots: fleeting, often banal images captured during both distant and nearby travels. These may include an airplane icon on the seatback screen in front of him, a fragment of a street scene, or an incidental everyday detail. Rather than using the photograph as a complete image, Pepermans frequently isolates a fragment, which he systematically converts into black and white, disrupting any straightforward reading of the depicted subject.
The photographs are printed on plexiglass and mounted over canvas that has been rudimentarily painted with acrylic. Each work is given a distinct color tone, a form of controlled monochromy. Far from serving as a neutral backdrop, the painted canvas activates the image, charging it with color, tension, and different kinds of visual energy.
At the bottom of each work, a handwritten title appears on a white strip. This gesture refers to the captions commonly found beneath photographs in magazines, yet here the titles function less as explanations than as destabilizing elements. A close-up of a soup ladle may be bathed in a yellow glow; elsewhere, a portrait of Monet with his beard appears — but certainty about what is being seen remains elusive.
Taken together, the works form an experimental visual diary: spontaneous, raw, and direct, yet never uncontrolled and always meticulously executed. Journal Brut operates in the tension between chance and composition, between everyday observation and formal investigation, resulting in a coherent and singular visual language in which photography, painting, and graphic sensibility converge.
- Location
- Brussels
- Date
- Now open: —
- Open Sunday:
- 25/01/2026
- Open Sunday:
- 08/02/2026
Selected Images
