THISISNOTABOUT, BELGIAN PHOTOGRAPHER, NAMUR,
My Tunisia, that of "This is not about Tunisia", resembles this fleeting moment that is the blue hour, this moment of grace between melancholy and light. The heart wavers, evanescent, changing. It is this moment when the blue, sublimated by the last glimmer of the sun, crosses and gradually gives way to darkness. Light and shadow brush against each other with the tips of the fingers, exchange, then each return to their extreme.
This almost original dialogue nourishes my photographic gaze. This Tunisia is that of my doubts, where my reality collides with my dreams, a bipolar cycle echoing myself, wandering on the horizon of my childhood.
I see this hypnotic sea, calm and soothing, in which I let myself be enveloped without fear... like a child in its mother's arms. But it is there, in this deceptive tranquility, that the storm is born.
Fabien Ribery – L’intervalle.blog
In composing the self-published fanzine, This is ̶n̶o̶t̶ about the Devil Inside, the Belgian photographer decided to explore, through black & white and color analog photography, the meanderings of his psyche and of a life that appears chaotic.
By photographing his nocturnal and phantasmatic wanderings, by exhibiting them in order, perhaps, to expiate them, by confessing his immense grief, David Ameye sets himself on the path of redemption, for the greatest sinners are never far from the grace of the redeemed.
Frédéric Martin – Critic / 5ruedu
Why? Why does love end? This is ̶n̶o̶t̶ about the Devil Inside could be an attempt to answer this difficult and insoluble question. But it is not only about that. There is also, running beneath it all, the question of what drives the protagonists of every story of love and family: the compromises that end up weighing heavily, the unspoken words that overflow, the wavering states of mind.
David Ameye does not hide behind excuses. He evokes the demon that consumes him, with simplicity and candor. He tells of love and of the fall with complete honesty.
And what is this mocking devil that invades him? It does not matter. We may give it scientific names, define it, classify it, medicalize it: it will be there nonetheless, pushing those who endure it into their last entrenchments, tormenting the soul of the one it inhabits.
...A DECEPTIVE AND AMBIVALENT FEELING...
David Ameye was born in 1973 in Belgium. He spent a large part of his childhood in Tunisia. He currently lives and works in Namur (B).
His photographic universe, which he himself describes as deceptive and ambivalent, stems from a melancholy whose genesis dates back to his youth and which, even today, feeds this insatiable need to transcribe his daily life with brilliance.
His images are defined more as an outlet for his sensitivity.
His photographic approach is a meeting point between his inner world and reality. He does not seek to disguise the tangible or to embellish it.
Every emotion captured or transcribed is transmitted abruptly.
A so-called 'intuitive' photography.
One might consider his work to be without apparent reason, but his entire body of work reveals a coherence charged with a strong emotional tension.
© David Ameye. All rights reserved