Dirk Braeckman: Although

GRIMM is pleased to present Although, a solo exhibition by Dirk Braeckman, on view at the London gallery from April 23 to May 30, 2026. Bringing together a focused selection of recent works, the exhibition situates these within the broader arc of Braeckman’s practice and marks the artist’s first solo presentation in the United Kingdom. For over four decades, Dirk Braeckman has developed a distinctive and influential body of work rooted in the materials and processes of analogue photography, favouring experiential techniques that resist traditional photographic conventions. Within his practice, the darkroom emerges as both a site of discovery and spectral agent in the making of images. With a shared affinity for exposing their means of production, his works charts the material processes of photography itself as well as the imprints of time. The exhibition title, Although, emerges from ongoing conversations around Braeckman’s images and the continual questioning of what is visible and what remains obscured. Drawing from a fascination with the history and technical processes of photography, Braeckman’s works reflect on images today and how we consume them. The works featured in this exhibition foreground this relationship, drawing attention to the material qualities and imperfections of the photographic image. Working from a vast archive of negatives, Braeckman’s images often feature dissonant landscapes, architectural motifs and obscured subjects clipped from their original settings. In L.J.-L.S.-22, a female sitter is shown looking away from the camera. Looking at the back of her soft veil of hair and the angle of her shoulder, they differ from the conventional portrait format, in which the sitter faces the lens and establishes a direct connection with the viewer. By having the sitter turn her face or body away, Braeckman moves away from a traditional portrait and instead opens the image to a more ambiguous, vernacular interpretation. Drawn to the unintentional aesthetic qualities contained in vernacular photography, Braeckman’s fascination with images produced outside the sphere of art, often for practical or documentary purposes, continues to inform his works. These include anonymous product photographs, private snapshots, legal records, and scientific imagery. Like many vernacular images, his works often depict quiet interiors, ambiguous spaces, or scenes perforated by the indelible markers of absence. In ECHTZEIT#117-24, created for his museum show Echtzeit at FOMU, Antwerp (BE), in 2024, Braeckman selected images from the museum’s collection to work with. A ship is depicted half-concealed in grainy darkness against the backdrop of a frothing ocean, a silvery and subdued presence floating eerily, merging into the smokey recesses of the frame. Half blackened by process, Braeckman’s images possess an alchemical complexity to them, collaging and re-photographing these reproductions, he adds dust and paint, smearing images before processing, lending them to an ambiguous and inscrutable quality. Imperfections such as scratches, creases, dull spots or subtle shifts of light are not concealed but highlighted as integral elements of the composition. Through this process, Braeckman positions the photograph not simply as a visual representation but a physical object – something that carries with it the traces of process, time and touch. Process continues to intercept form in much of Braeckman’s phot