Chasm of the Unknown, 2024
Vera van Almen is a Dutch artist born in 1986. based in ’s-Hertogenbosch, in the south of the Netherlands. She graduated at the Photo Academy in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2017. While studying photography, she started experimenting more and more with photography, pushing the boundaries of the medium. Her digital camera was soon exchanged for an analogue camera, supplemented by an old-fashioned Polaroid camera. This became her favourite. She discovered the charm of allowing chance and the imperfections that come with it. The urge to experiment remained and soon she started trying out different printing techniques in the darkroom, which proved to be a pivotal moment in her artistic journey. Having to act physically to achieve images became a necessity in her process. She has since abandoned the camera entirely and now creates her images camera-less.
Artist statement
“My artworks feel like enigmas of absence, a quest for the intangible, a journey to states of being that I cannot rationally grasp. My camera-less practice challenges the conventional notion of control by embracing contingency and valuing the unpredictable as an integral element of my artistic process. My images, devoid of literal representation, invite viewers to contemplate the unseen and unknown.”
“My artworks feel like enigmas of absence, a quest for the intangible, a journey to states of being that I cannot rationally grasp. My camera-less practice challenges the conventional notion of control by embracing contingency and valuing the unpredictable as an integral element of my artistic process. My images, devoid of literal representation, invite viewers to contemplate the unseen and unknown.”