Slightly set back from Place Flagey, one of the vast lively esplanades of Brussels, the Tiny Gallery, which opened in March 2020, quietly imposes itself as a place removed from the contingencies of everyday city life. To qualify what is going on there in a deceptively old-fashioned tranquility (eight employees, of six different nationalities), Olivier Guyaux, who runs the dispensary tied to the “Photo Brut 2” route, talks about “cultural respite, focused on slow photography, guided by the simplicity of the gesture”.
“Instinctive act”
As enigmatic as it is engaging, the statement in fact refers to amateur practice, as it was conceived at the beginnings of the medium, in the 1860s, until the interwar period. A “instinctive act, not intended to enter the artistic framework”, but which we contemplate today with tender deference, in the lair studded with cyanotypes, tintotypes and other albumens. Ordinary scenes where we play, drink, walk around, strike a pose with family or friends. And then there is also this fascinating collection of portraits of men and women, well dressed in their person, who stare at the lens, with a penetrating or fierce air no doubt accentuated by the solemnity of a situation which, the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th was hardly frequent.
Parentless ancestors
The series bears the title “Illusory Love” and does not reveal anything about the identity of the beings represented… for the simple reason that they never existed. Magic or curse of modern times, it is indeed artificial intelligence which, through a meticulous textual description, has generated this apocryphal gallery of ancestors without parents or descendants, refined for months using materials and techniques of yesteryear (albumen, silver bromide, rag paper, insolation, etc.). An ectoplasmic anthology which is not without questioning, by the very admission of the sorcerer’s apprentice, Olivier Guyaux, who also specializes in the digitization of cultural heritage (he worked for the Prado, the school of La Cambre , the Niki de Saint Phalle Foundation…), pointing out “the dangers” of a subterfuge blurring the chronological boundaries of an authenticity so perniciously falsified.