Peereman

It is hard to write a bio to accompany a photographic exhibition when the photographer does not consider himself as …a photographer. But OK, , let’s try… Although a professional director and producer for film and video (corporate, docs, music video…) Eric has always made still pictures as a non professional in the sense that it has never been « a job ».
Still pictures always remains a secret garden beside his moving pictures production. At a time in his professional life the passion for still picture can develop, the series « One meter Square », 1M2, takes place, a series which will be a never ending series. It is called 1 M2 since each time Eric photographs the soil at his feet with his 6X6 Hasselblad camera equiped with the only lens he has (a Zeiss 60 mm which is matching his vison of things), he captures a surface which is roughly one meter square. This is a neverending series because just as a portraitist always finds new interest in new faces to photograph, Eric never stops to find new « earthprints » to capture. This series starts in Tanzania, probably because the «quality» of what can be seen at the ground level is imposing from itself. Or maybe because the quality of light gives things full volume, interest and beauty (pictures are done early in the morning or late in the afternoon).
As for paintings, Eric is interested in emptying things and objects of their « concrete » side in order to reveal them in a abstract way, to put their formal interest on the foreground. He appreciates the work of Rothko, Bacon, Baskia, Pollock…
On 24X36 format, Eric printed a series on trees hit and destroyed by the storm and lighting. During the shooting of a feature film on Baka Pygmies in Cameroon he made a series focusing on the nomad natives of the Great Forest.
Eric Peereman is Belgian and just comes back with his family from Tanga (North Tanzania, on the coast of the Indian Ocean) where he lived the last 7 years.
The series « 1 M2 » will soon be presented in Brussels.