031 - Max Pinckers
© Max Pinckers
Max Pinckers was born in Belgium in 1988 and grew up in Indonesia, India, Australia and Singapore. Although his dad was a photographer, he didn’t start shooting himself until 2006 when he returned to his native country to study documentary photography at the KASK academy of fine art in Ghent, where he is currently a doctoral researcher. In 2015 he became a nominee of Magnum Photos.
Not believing in the possibility of sheer objectivity or neutrality, Pinckers advocates a manifest subjective approach, which is made visible through the explicit use of theatrical lighting, stage directions or extras. Extensive research and diligent technical preparation are combined with improvisation to obtain lively, unexpected, critical, poetic and simultaneously documentary images.
Since 2011 he has produced several documentary photo-series in Thailand, India, Japan and Kenya. Every series is turned into a carefully laid out book consisting of interwoven photographs, documents and texts.
In Episode 031, Max discusses, among other things:
Being a Magnum nominee
The 'income pie chart' question
An itinerant upbringing
A brief teaser for the latest project
Photobook mentioned: Poppy, Trails of Afghan Heroin by Robert Knoth & Antoinette de Jong
“I was becoming much more interested in the way that fiction influences reality and not the other way around. And about how the line between the two is one we can’t define. Everything flows over into each other and there’s really not much point in trying to point a finger at what’s real and what’s not.”
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