Athos Burez, visual artist

This publication contains more than 70 images, which together form a series called As it (n)ever was. Using that same title, the images were exhibited at C-mine in Genk in the summer of 2024. It is the most extensive series in the oeuvre of photographer Athos Burez, the result of two years of research and production.

The idea for the series was sparked by a collection of historical postcards from and about Genk, a Belgian city in a former mining region, today part of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion, straddling parts of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. The postcards cover around 150 years of local history, and today are preserved by the Emile Van Dorenmuseum. They prove that Genk is more than just a conglomerate of coal mines. They reveal an identity with multiple layers, in which rural, recreational, cultural, scientific, industrial, and ecological elements overlap. We see an area continuously contested between nature and industry, and a stage crowded by a transient cast – some as residents, others as tourists.

Today, we see the picture postcards of yesteryear as nostalgic collectibles, but once, they were the favoured means of communication for sending short, light-hearted messages to loved ones back home. In a few handwritten lines, tourists would share where they were, what they noticed about the place, and what they would be doing the rest of the day. A postcard said: “I may be far away, but I’m thinking of you.” It was that age’s equivalent of sending a WhatsApp message or posting a picture on social media.

And indeed, the image on the front of the postcard was just as important as the text. Starting in the mid-19th century – when they became popular throughout Europe – postcards showed landscapes, city views, monuments, and other curiosities, all carefully photographed. Postcard photographers usually remained anonymous. They worked for publishers or producers who had the postcards printed in large volumes, on behalf of the Powers that Be (whether hotels, the church, factories, or politicians). Postcards were a commercial product, standardized and with an easily understandable topic, in order to reach and delight as large an audience as possible. “The postcard is an image that points: Look at the spire of Genk’s church in the distance, see the hotel where we stayed, our restaurant, that bar where we went”, reflected author Dirk Lauwaert in Genk door schildersogen (Genk through painter’s eyes) back in 2010. “The postcard is tirelessly enthusiastic and inviting. Look! Come visit! These are images permeated with, and motivated by, desire.”

Athos Burez did not create a contemporary version of these postcards. He discarded all the evident features: the standard size, the serrated edges, the rectangular space reserved for the postage stamp, the (typically) tourism-inspired topic, the presence of text, etcetera. Burez’s images have a different function; he has added artistic intent.

Creating a fantasy version of the Hôtel des Artistes, which existed from the late 19th century until its demolition in 1960, Athos Burez assembles a colourful mix of eccentric guests. We start our journey through time in 1885 with the tragic image of an unappreciated landscape painter, and end in the future, when wild animals roam our hotel rooms, and a nuclear-tinged aesthetic suggests a catastrophic energy disaster. In between, one and the same hotel room serves as the recurrent backdrop for residents to share their most intimate secrets with the viewer. Time flows in a linear way, but sometimes also folds back on itself, capriciously meandering to a time and a place that (n)ever were.

While people were merely extras in the original postcards, Burez promotes them to the main characters of his images. He opens the proverbial door of the monument depicted on the postcard. Individual desires are magnified and displayed in settings that subtly refer to actual events. Burez’s images are imbued with desire, but do not point to the outside world. Desire is not imposed on us by an external force. In his images, Burez exhibits – sometimes very explicitly – what happens behind closed doors; when we dare to peel away the veneer of social conformity.

The exhibition and this publication are a re-valuation of the postcard collection as a valuable repository of the visual memory of a city. But Athos Burez goes further than that; he revives historical images and questions them. He hypothesizes: Which facet of a city deserves to be immortalized? Which events do we want to remember? What is important, and what is (seemingly) trivial? And who decides all that? What if history had taken a different turn? Can we imagine a different future for ourselves if we accept that our past is fluid? I would like to invite you to keep these questions close as you leaf through this book and take in the pictures, but also when the book has been replaced on its shelf, and you’re walking through the streets of your own city.

Louise Osieka