Isabelle Arthuis, Marie-Noëlle BOUTIN, Elina BROTHERUS, Dirk BRAECKMAN, Sébastien CAMBOULIVE, Andre CEPEDA, Federico CLAVARINO, Julien COULOMMIER, Gilbert DE KEYSER, Vicente de MELLO, Marc DENEYER, Paul DEN HOLLANDER, Daniel DESMEDT, Monica ENGLUND, JH ENGSTRÖM, Gilbert FASTENAEKENS, Joan FONTCUBERTA, Alain GERONNEZ, Jean-Louis GODEFROID, Istvan HALAS, Philippe HERBET, Dency KANE, Lucas LEFFLER, Angel MARCOS, Christian MEYNEN, Joël NEPPER, Alain PAIEMENT, Bernard PLOSSU, Sébastien REUZE, Serge VANDERCAM, Jacques VILET…

Both the assignments and the residencies resulted from discussions with several photographers who wanted to work in Brussels. There was therefore a real need to set up these projects since the artists wanted them. Jean-Louis Godefroid

From 9th June to 27th August 2023, Contretype presents the exhibition Visual Dissonance, a selection of photographs from its collection. A priori, an art centre or an exhibition space does not have a collection. The constitution and conservation of a collection is more the task of a museum. Nevertheless, Contretype is an exception to the rule and is proud to have built up a collection of nearly 250 works since its creation in 1978. The purpose of this exhibition is to bring to light a lesser-known heritage, witnessing a history spanning almost 50 years, and to position it at the heart of the new strategic directions of Contretype. Above all, it presents a project that has been at the service of artists for almost 50 years.The first historical place to publicly present photography in Belgium, Contretype rapidly established itself as an important space for photography. An ardent defender of photography as a means of artistic expression rather than as a technical tool for documenting reality, its founder Jean-Louis Godefroid was able to invite photographers to exhibit who were significant, both for the history of photography in Belgium and internationally. At that time, the scales of value and renown were certainly not the same as today, nor were they as divisive, and Contretype was thus able to display works by artists such as Peter Downsbrough, Alain Géronnez, Robert Rauschenberg, Daniel Brunemer, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jacques Vilet. An enlightened mind, Jean-Louis Godefroid was also able to highlight the photographic vision of Edouard Hannon, an engineer and a man of progress, as the cultivated bourgeoisie could be at the time, a pioneer of pictorialism in Belgium and a founding member in 1874 of the Belgian Photographic Association, in whose private mansion, in Saint-Gilles, Contretype was located. Over the course of the exhibitions, in gratitude, artists left works to Contretype which formed the basis of its collection. The inclusion of works by Gilbert Fastenaekens, Stefan De Jaeger and Dirk Braeckman, dating from this period, certainly reflects the climate of innovation and exchange that must have motivated Jean-Louis Godefroid’s choices, like a reminder of the spirit of militancy and emulation that characterised the official art salons at the end of the 19th century.

In 1998, after 20 years of operation, Jean-Louis Godefroid decided to structure his work by creating an artist residency programme. Originally, in 1991, in response to a desire expressed by artists to «put their gaze to the test in the city», it was a simple commission, an assignment as they were called, entitled 04°50°. Daniel Desmedt, Gilbert Fastenaekens, Marc Deneyer, Christian Meynen and Jacques Vilet were invited to work on the city of Brussels. Seven years later, a second assignment, this time bringing together Belgian and foreign photographers, formed the basis of the residency programme that was to develop, called The Image of Brussels. These residencies had two main objectives: to create a contemporary archive of Brussels, while considering Brussels not as an imposed framework for representation but as one of the parameters of the work of each of the invited artists: We do not put the creator at the service of utilitarian ideas. On the contrary, it is a matter of setting photographers objectives that are appropriate to their artistic practice and encouraging discoveries and experiments that lead to a reflection on the urban landscape, both human and built. (Jean-Louis Godefroid and Denis Stokkink, respectively Director and President of Contretype in  1998).

Artists from here and elsewhere, both famous and less so, have been among the guests of Contretype over the years. Welcomed and hosted in Brussels, they each receive a bud get to produce new works, of which they each give one or more copies to the Contretype collection. In 2014, the critic and photography historian Michel Poivert used the expression «visual dissonance» to define the great diversity of photographic styles and writing that characterises all these works. This eclecticism also reveals all the imaginary worlds that a single place, Brussels, has allowed to unfold: the affirmation of non-homogeneity in the interpretation of reality.

The Contretype collection has not often been the subject of exhibitions. There was the one organised in 2018 at the CRP/ (Centre régional de la photographie), in Douchy-les- Mines in the north of France, another art centre to have a collection of photographs. Closer to home, we remember the great exhibition Brussels Unlimited, artists’ residencies in Brussels, presented at the Centrale d’art contemporain in Brussels in 2014. Danielle Leenaerts, who curated the exhibition, traced the various artistic approaches, the di- verse concepts of residency and the different faces of Brussels among the works. This exhibition enabled us to measure the artistic and patrimonial results of all these years of residencies. The residencies still take place at Contretype, the collection continues to grow, and the ‘image of Brussels’ continues to expand. Belgian or Brussels artists have a part to play in this, as their work is inspired by the fertile ground of Brussels, even if it is not directly oriented towards the representation of the city. In a way, they too construct the image of Brussels.

Creating an exhibition in 2023 based on the Contretype collection will not spare repre- sentations of the urban, social and human realities of Brussels. However, it will involve experimenting with aesthetic hypotheses, drawing up narratives, generating unexpec- ted encounters... arranging dissonance!

Olivier Grasser