Magnum photographer Carl De Keyzer investigates marginalized social groups and constructs uncritical psychological portraits which work to familiarize the "other."
The vibrant color photographs in Zona capture surreal images of life as a detainee in post-Soviet prison camps. De Keyzer's photographs present bizarre scenes from the lives of real prisoners in a strangely fabricated reality. On a trip to Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, De Keyzer was introduced to Camp 27, a former gulag turned model camp, which additionally functions as a propaganda tool: it is shown to visiting ambassadors and media crews to boast the merits of the post-Soviet penal system. At a destination that often conjures notions of frigid temperatures and bleak, lifeless landscapes, De Keyzer found the unlikely juxtaposition of inmates in army uniforms posed against vividly painted fairytales of knights and gladiators.
In God, Inc., De Keyzer's black and white images explore the various sects of Christianity that exist in the United States, the nature of their beliefs, and how they are expressed. Traversing the country in a quintessentially American Winnebago, he photographed Midwest televangelists, Mormons staging Bible story pageants in rural upstate New York, the "Sons of God" religious motorcyclists at Bike Week in Daytona Beach, the Power Team of bodybuilders crusading for Jesus throughout Texas, and others. The photographs examine the drastically different and often-extreme ways in which people communicate with God.
De Keyzer became a full member of Magnum in 1994. In 1995, he won the National Award for Contemporary Art in Belgium. His work has been shown at the Fotoinstituut in Holland and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, among other museums. The City Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgium (SMAK) is hosting a solo exhibition of his work in 2008. De Keyzer's photographs are included in several notable collections including the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Fotomuseum in Belgium and the International Center of Photography in New York. De Keyzer currently lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.
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