Valery Lippens

The Haecceity Series

A puzzling game ... labyrinthic... images mirroring other images ... drifting from one to another ... zig zagging back and forth ... colours, shades, lines, reflections, movements, fragmentations and shapes. Photographs tell stories linked to other stories.

The Haecceity Series consists of composite grids photographs that challenge the narrative that can reside in isolated scenes. The idea behind the series was to depart from traditional individual picture making and to explore the realm of multiple frames, compositions and montages to create or compose images combining fragments of the representation of ``reality".

On one hand the Haecceity Series evokes a kind of geometrical game composed of lines, shapes, colors, merging like interlocking pieces of a vast urban puzzle. On the other hand upon a closer inspection, it comes across differently and appears somehow more tangible. The initial tendency is for the eyes to follow the linear directions across the grid, horizontally or vertically. However, the viewer may quickly get pulled into the different movements upon discerning the paths of a specific character, a shadow, a line, a color, and get lost again. Through this new way of viewing one image after another, each viewer creates a narrative or some sort of cinematic chronology that is completely unique.

Valery Lippens

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Valery Lippens was born with a camera in his crib being the son of a prominent Belgian photographer. Valery has extensively traveled the world documenting life’s most mundane moments in a unique, transformative way.

Photographing his way through a law degree from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, a Political Science BA from Columbia University in NYC, and more recently a Post Graduate Certificate in Professional Photography - with a Distinction - from Central Saint Martins in London, Valery Lippens has elegantly surprised and touched his subjects with a unique magnification of their most subtle qualities.

Throughout the years, Valery has worked collaboratively and individually on a variety of shows demonstrating his singular talent for understanding his subjects: ranging from his collection of “ephemeral” photographs about urban decay to his images for a documentary about Vietnam Veterans, and from his collages for Handicap International’s group show to his most recent “Haecceity Series” that challenges the traditional individual picture making by exploring the realm of multiple frames.