Gomma Photography Grant 2024
Wild & Free
Photographer
Gil Barez
Wild & Free
16 Jan, 2025
"I remember our first meeting and the look of the police on this turbulent troupe. Where they saw only a source of concern, I saw only the beauty! There was this beautiful energy emanating. They were young, alive, spontaneous! From then on I knew... I knew that I had to go beyond this first contact, that I had to paint a picture of this dissenting youth. Sharing and photographing these moments of life for several years, resulting in images with sweet scents of revolt, but especially resistance. An ode to a different youth! It is clear that today, in our Western society, no one is really wild and free but some are more than others ... ( Series Made in Belgium 2017- 2021 - Still on going project )"
About the photographer
Gil Barez
"I wanted to be a painter, now I'm a photographer. I'd like to be nomadic and drunk at every moment. Drunk with space and light! But life is like that, so at the turn of each experience, I look for that blessed moment where I feel in my place. The act of photography is one of the ways in which I can achieve this. I took my first photograph at the age of 19, completely unaware at the time of the importance of the photographic act in my life. Quite simply, I let myself be guided by the desire to get out of my house, to go elsewhere. I let myself be guided by an initial emotion, a vague and uncertain feeling whose destination I don't know most of the time - and that's the whole point! In the end, what always interests and inspires me is the idea of the journey: an inside-out trip, a way of interacting with the world, of corresponding with it!"
