Published by Hannibal Books in late 2021, “Max Pinckers” is a trilingual monograph (English, Dutch, French) that celebrates ten years of creative partnership between Belgian photographer Max Pinckers and writer Hans Theys. This volume was produced for Pinckers’ major solo exhibition “Double Bind” at the FOMU Photo Museum of Antwerp. Unlike typical retrospectives, Theys was given full creative freedom to re-contextualize Pinckers’ photographs, creating a new, singular narrative that highlights the artist’s exploration of the “speculative process” of documentary filmmaking and photography. Theys contributes a deep critical essay influenced by Susan Sontag, analyzing how Pinckers uses reality as a moldable concept to challenge the critical, technological, and ideological structures of the image.
