Emmanuel Van der Auwera

Nine Florida Stories, 2020

Set of four C-Prints
30 x 40 cm each
11 3/4 x 15 3/4 in each
Edition of 40

Emmanuel Van der Auwera’s new editioned photo series ‘Nine Florida Stories’, is less a part of practice than something like a ‘milestone edition’, released on the occasion of the first major publication dedicated to his work. He shot these images while in Miami, researching and capturing material for his film diptych The Death of K9 Cigo & The Sky is on Fire. After returning to Brussels and processing his new material, he chose to print these four photographs in a large format and hang them in his studio, where they served as inspiration as he completed the two films, and also as lights in the horizon gently nudging the artist towards future works.

Like the film diptych, the photographs relate to American gun culture and the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. These images, revealing both beauty and brutality with bits of Bauhaus and a lead blossom, are named after Stoneman Douglas’ compilation of short tales Nine Florida Stories. A selection of four of these photographs are for a limited time available exclusively alongside the artist’s first monograph Emmanuel Van der Auwera: A Certain Amount of Clarity. With contributions by Hans De Wolf, Caroline Dumalin, Harlan Levey, Justine Ludwig, and Ive Stevenheydens, the book is designed by Bureau Wolewinski and published by Mercatorfonds and Yale University Press.