Bruno V. Roels is a Belgian artist
Episode 209: I caught up with Bruno V. Roels to speak about his practice, work, and our shared interests in collecting photography.
It would be a complete lie if I were to say that I am not a massive fan of both Bruno and his work. I have written about his work before and both of us share a number of similar interest points in our careers, mostly related to the historic tropes and uses of photography in both the positive and the negative. I first began looking at Bruno’s work around 2015 and 2016 having been really taken with his use of multiples and analog processes.
I managed to interview Bruno a few years ago for American Suburb X and also had the good fortune to spend some time with him on a trip to Belgium in 2019. I find his process unique in the field and see a number of critical discussions emerging from the work that, when begun in the mid-2010s were well ahead of the trend to speak about matters such as colocalization and photography, which is now at the forefront of many academic discussions surrounding the medium. Call him prescient, but Bruno’s images also play interesting aesthetic games, asking the viewer to longer understand the history of images that exceed photography itself.
In our conversation, we speak about Bruno’s background in the arts, but also his process and our shared interests in images and collecting historic material. Bruno, ever the polite, kind, and sincere person that he is illuminates the discussion with his thoughts on image-making and the problems of representation. Please tune in. Bruno is an absolute pleasure to speak with.
