I have been standing before a photograph taken outside a Belgian café for an indeterminate stretch of time, hustling for language to explain it. On the surface, Antwerp, 1988, is simple enough: A woman, viewed through the café’s window, is reading a newspaper. But the window rails obscuring her face and the shadows partitioning her body stymie any conclusion as clear-cut as I am looking at a picture of a woman. This dance of apprehension continued throughout my visit to “La part des choses,” Harry Gruyaert’s exhibition at Le Bal, where I was stuck on the outside of a stealthy inside joke the photographer has with himself.
Gruyaert, though Belgian, is often cited in the same breath as contemporary American photographers like William Eggleston and Joel Meyerwoitz for his incredible command of color—a hallmark that the exhibition conveys with a tactful emphasis. The works selected at Le Bal speak in bright but never exaggerated tones; colors seem coated in a dewiness that the eye can retreat into. The photos are also mounted on variously colored walls, redoubling the chromatic dialogue already taking place within them.
But most intractable in Gruyaert’s work is the uncanny cadence of estrangement that lurks throughout it, a tragic sense of isolation that perturbs his ebullient palette. In Moscow, 1989, a man with his back to the camera stands at the center of an eerily blue room, observing his own solitude in the mirror. Even in images with numerous subjects, people rarely look at one another—and even more rarely do they interact. Take, for example, Morocco, Ouarzazate, 1986, in which two figures are pictured on opposite sides of a dim street corner, their physical and psychic distance elongated by a stretch of shadows. The aching sense of alienation is made more poignant by Gruyaert’s proclivity for positioning himself as an outsider—often observing people from behind or through windows or doorframes, dusting his photos with an air of voyeurism. I too feel like I am watching, peering into this strange orbit of quiet and shared longing.
