Rogier Houwen

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Anyone who has ever spent more than a few hours in a darkroom knows it is as if you are in a womb: there are no external stimuli, no daylight, no sounds. Just you and the magic of the developing process. Whilst this might not be an environment suited for everyone, for Rogier Houwen (1992), an up-and-coming photographer from Amsterdam, the darkroom represents the departure point of his contemplative photography practice. It is the space where he can convert his daytime observations – from a shimmering reflection in the dusk to an ocean vista – onto paper, to then be able to share with the world. Whether it is a landscape or an inanimate object like a candle on the brink of extinguishing – to Houwen everything radiates a certain atmosphere. These atmospheres – the subtle vibrations that can be felt – are his subjects. “My work is not about what is seen but what is felt through seeing.” As such, his imagery is an echo of a feeling that he wishes to communicate to the viewer, not a depiction of what he saw at the moment of pushing the button. Employing a muted, mostly black-and-white palette, the photos are stripped of perceptions of space, distance and time – giving it a transcendental and timeless quality.

Here he reflects on how this meditative art practice came into being, what draws him to the qualities of black-and-white photography and how he unites the everyday with the cosmic.

If you had to describe what it feels like to look through your eyes. What would you say?

It feels like a continuous sense of wonder. Through my eyes everything is radiating an atmosphere. Close observation of these atmospheres is the entrance to my vision. What I find striking has not much to do with what I objectively observe, but more so the feeling of transcendence I have through observing. I see my photographs as windows for wonderment that can take the viewer out of a limited self-identity into a cosmic identity. They reflect a sense of being part of a universal whole.

What is the catalyst for your current work and what development preceded it?

In 2017 I had a spontaneous transcendental experience in which my sense of individuality dissolved into universality or what I call universal consciousness. This event naturally caused an urge to withdraw my senses from the outer world and explore my inner world. The experience of oneness – of having no boundaries and being one with everything – shook me from the bottom up and my mind needed time to recalibrate.

“My work is not about what is seen but what is felt through seeing.”

For a year and a half I spent most of my time sitting still with my eyes closed, contemplating and observing my inner world, whilst not making any new work. The magic I experienced there became the catalyst for my renewed photographic practice in the years that followed. I felt the urge to create again and share my contemplations through photography. These first photographs took on a whole new form.

What new form did your photographic practice take?

At first I went through a phase of such abstraction and minimalism that viewing my photographs was as if looking at emptiness. For example I used an empty sheet of photographic paper as an object for concentration and decided to stare at it for three hours a day, one month long. During this experiment I only took two photographs, one of the empty sheet in an empty white space and the second one was the crumbled sheet of paper appearing to be a snow landscape. From there onwards, my images shifted from stillness and minimalism to vitality and expressionism.

As such you can see how the inspiration drawn from nature has become a motif in my work: from a close-up of whispering foliage to a wide-angled shot of a mountain chain. When I am out in the woods or the mountains I get fascinated by how the cosmic world and the terrestrial world come together visually. The thread throughout my work is seeing these apparently separated worlds, the cosmic and the earthly, being reflected in each other.

Is that why your latest series is called Above Below, which refers to the saying that what happens in the higher, more abstract levels of the universe, corresponds to the lower, more concrete levels on earth?

Indeed, bridging that duality and showing the unity of both worlds, like two sides of the same coin, is at the core of my practice. ‘As above so below’ is an old saying which suggests that the above – the cosmic – is reflected in the below: the earthly. I stripped it down to a mere ‘Above Below’ to bring them even closer.

I can be struck by anything in everyday life, literally every aspect of daily life can evoke a sense of childlike wonder: from sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees or a tantalising contrast, to weeds peeking through the cracks of a pavement. I am playing around with different layers, techniques and textures that enable me to bring those fleeting, cosmic reflections alive through photography and especially printing. Currently I am also exploring etching and printing on materials other than paper, such as plaster and wood. It imbues my work with a certain tactility that can only be experienced offline.

Whilst there is undoubtedly an observant, quiet quality to your work, there is an explosiveness to it as well. How do these opposites relate with each other in your work?

In my perception stillness exists within movement, harmony exists within chaos and vice versa. I am fascinated by these contradictions that I see reflected in nature everywhere; the eye of a hurricane, frozen water, a cloud popping up and evaporating in the sky. First, there was an omnipresent emptiness in my work, but now I feel a sense of vitality has entered. It has become increasingly easier to convey what I feel: as if the veil of thoughts that linger between my observations and the final work has lifted.

Your work is mainly black and white photography, however now there is a hint of colour – a first in your work.

Yes, the appeal of black and white photography has always been that it doesn’t pretend to capture reality. We perceive the world in colour, so black and white is a clear departure from that. It alludes to the fact that there is more than just meets the eye. The sparse use of colour – mostly monochromatic – is a new development within my work, something that I will continue to explore and expand.