Dirk Braeckman’s photographs show interior worlds. Mostly they are interiors, vistas, sometimes human figures, often nudes, always as fragments. The images are immersed in a mysterious darkness, resulting in an intimate cosmos whose laws are perhaps also rooted in the tradition of Belgian Surrealism. The rooms, often deserted, furnished with armchairs, sofas, and beds, Braeckman condenses in his paintings into a somber atmosphere of existential abandon. His world is carried by a latent erotic tension, even in images where the human figure is absent. Braeckman’s interest is not in depicting concrete places and people; rather, he creates a concentrated, exalted pictorial reality whose references to place and time are only hinted at as ciphers in his picture titles. He also takes pictures of pictures and in doing so makes the grammar of phototechnical processes visible: Flash, overexposure and underexposure, as well as interventions in the development process lead to an unmistakable materiality of his images. “On the surface my images appear peaceful, when you look at them. (…) If you reduce everything, it comes up and hits you between the eyes. Sex, death, everything. I know, it sounds like a stultifying cliché, but you have to dare to admit that that`s what it`s about. (…)“ D.B. 1998