Original abstract
My perspective on life is steeped in a feeling of foreboding. I've always been particularly attuned to the dynamics of decay, of things running their course and dissolving, with a whisper or with a bang. This emotion manifests itself, paradoxically perhaps, in the experience of newly built (urban or peri-urban) infrastructure, which often strikes me as morose, out of place, totally devoid of life and feeling.
Back in 2003 my first consciously conceived photo project - Line 36 - already tentatively explored that confluence of hubris and doom. (The series documented infrastructure works that turned the train line that connects the city of Brussels to my home town Leuven into a ruthless manifestation of speed and efficiency, erasing any echo of carefree travel that may have been associated with it).
The present project - Airport Walks - partakes of a similar spirit. It was conceived in 2015, on a ride with the Leonardo Express from Fiumicino to the city of Rome. The ugliness of these dross-scapes triggered an odd mix of elation and grief.
I took up the project in 2016. The idea is to walk from an airport to the city centre. I am limiting myself to major European hubs that are located at a fair distance from the urban core. Walks vary in length between 15 and 40 km. At present I have walked from Rome, Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Paris, and Zürich airports. Athens will bring the project to a close.
There are various narratives wrapped into this project. At a micro-level it reflects a desire to stage unconventional dérive. Zooming out slightly, I have noticed recurring spatial patterns - constituting a typology of zones - that offer an interesting jigsaw puzzle to a keen eye. Emotionally I have to admit the curiously bracing character of these walks. Although boredom and ugliness abound there is also great beauty to be discovered and I usually hit the city centre in a mood of jubilation. The bigger story is the confluence of oppositional elemental energies: humanity's technological prowess and irrepressible drive to explore - epitomised by jet-powered flight - are counteracted by an addiction to fossil fuels that is filled with feelings of guilt and foreboding. Hence, the insouciance of my pedestrian experiments resonates with uneasy questions: How long will we be able to take to the skies so carelessly? What will happen with these drossscapes that are so precariously inhabited by human and non-human entities?
Final abstract
At the centre of the paper is a pedestrian project involving nine one-day walks from major European airport hubs to the centre of their respective cities. The idea was to document these walks photographically. This aim has decisively and pragmatically shaped the project as a whole and the individual walks. This a priori framing of the project reveals a clear relationship between the activities of walking and photography: walking was subordinate to the artistic project. The author walked in order to produce a collection of photographs. This paper seeks to validate this assessment of the nature of the relationship by exploring the character of the photographic project and the author's intentions and experiences. Three different windows are opened on the project: it is framed as an endeavour in the realms of street photography, landscape photography and what the author refers to as 'psychic photography'. These framings reveal an increasingly complex interdependence between physical presence, bodily locomotion, emotional reflexivity and imaging. Walking and photographing become inseparable, part of a more fundamental process of existential positioning, memory and identity formation.
