ANTWERP.- On 21 July 1969, at 2.56 UTC, Neil Alden Armstrong was the first person to ever set foot on the moon. 50 years later, the exhibition MAAN/MOON takes you on a photographic odyssey to our closest celestial neighbour and back. The object of dreams and fantasies, but also the catalyst for a global space race, the moon leaves no one unmoved.
FOMU goes in search of the stories engendered by this elusive white disk in our firmament, and reconciles its scientific, political and poetic facets. MAAN/MOON takes us back to the early days of photography with images by John Adams Whipple (1852), Warren de la Rue (1866-1880) and Lœwy & Puiseux’ magnificent lunar atlas (1896-1910). Contemporary artists also shine a light on the moon, with photographs from Apollo’s pivotal year, 1969, and the Cold War period. The result is an evocative stream of images that walk the fine line between fact and fiction, bitter truths and sweet dreams.
Includes historical 19th century photography, archival images from NASA and Life magazine, and various works by Annemie Augustijns, Fabrizio Boni & Giorgio De Finis, Tom Callemin, Cortis & Sonderegger, Cristina de Middel, Joan Fontcuberta, Vincent Fournier, Léon Gimpel, Harry Gruyaert, Sjoerd Knibbeler, Michael Light, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Joel Meyerowitz, Lisa Oppenheim, Katie Paterson, Robert Pufleb & Nadine Schlieper, Penelope Umbrico and others.
The exhibition is accompanied by the publication MOON - Photographing the Moon 1840 - Now published by FOMU and Hannibal.
Curators: Maarten Dings & Joachim Naudts
Cartes Postales
At the beginning of the 20th century, Paris was enchanted by the idea of travelling to the moon. A scene from the film Le voyage dans la lune by Georges Méliès, in which a woman sits upon a crescent moon, captured the popular imagination. Portrait photographers made a fortune out of this trend and the moon became a popular background image in photographic studios. Other postcards featured single or multiple images in which Pierrots, amorous couples or bare-bottomed children made their appearance ‘au clair de la lune’
Rebel Lives
Photographs from inside the Lord’s Resistance Army
Kristof Titeca
28.06.2019 - 06.10.2019
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan insurgent group led by Joseph Kony, emerged in the second half of the eighties. It is especially notorious for its mass abductions of civilians, of whom over half are children. The extreme violence practiced by this armed militia means that little is known about the lives of the abductees.
The Rebel Lives project relates a visual story about this rebel movement and the people who are a part of it. At the project’s heart is a series of recently discovered photographs that were taken by the LRA generals themselves. Kristof Titeca (BE, 1978), an expert in conflict studies, supplements this material with found drawings, videos and documents that provide context for the photographs. He also travelled to Uganda with photographer Georges Senga (1983, DRC) to revisit the people portrayed in the images. Rebel Lives offers an insight into a layered piece of history where the line between perpetrator and victim has become increasingly blurred.
The exhibition is accompanied by the publication Rebel Lives. Photographs from inside the Lord’s Resistance Army published by FOMU and Hannibal.
Curator: Rein Deslé
31 days of .tiff
Highlighting Emerging Image Makers
28.06.2019 - 28.07.2019
Belgium is teeming with talented photographers. FOMU has used the pages of .tiff magazine to provide exposure for ten promising photographers per year since its inception in 2012.
The magazine has since evolved into an international platform. During one month this summer, FOMU will show recent work by the following artists selected for .tiff 2018:
Elena Aya Bundurakis, Bertrand Cavalier, Jeroen De Wandel-Photographer, Ulla Deventer, Lionel Jusseret, Léonard Pongo, Maroussia Prignot & Valerio Alvarez, Titus Simoens, Egon Van Herreweghe & Ann Vincent.
.tiff forms part of Futures, a European partnership between FOMU and eleven other organisations, which aims to build a network of artists, experts and resources to spotlight talented Belgian photographers.
