About ‘'Meeting in the shadows'’ by Geert Van Baelen
In this layered collage work, tranquillity meets menace. Two men in long raincoats stand facing each other in a deserted passageway, caught in a moment that seems to hover between negotiation and farewell. Their silhouettes are cut by the cool light from above, while the space around them dissolves into shadow and grainy…
In this layered collage work, tranquillity meets menace. Two men in long raincoats stand facing each other in a deserted passageway, caught in a moment that seems to hover between negotiation and farewell. Their silhouettes are cut by the cool light from above, while the space around them dissolves into shadow and grainy texture.
The atmosphere unmistakably exudes film noir: the harsh contrast between light and dark, the existential tension, the suggestion that what is left unsaid weighs heavier than what is spoken. The scene evokes echoes of nocturnal encounters, moral ambiguity and urban loneliness — as if every word spoken here could trigger a chain reaction.
The underlying layer of the collage consists of a newspaper page in a fictional language, half visible, half overwritten by paint and darkness. The text does not function as information, but as noise: a visual reminder of news, history and narrative without fixed meaning. It reinforces the feeling that this image is a fragment of a larger, elusive story.
For this work, I combined photographic and digital techniques. The original photographic image forms the foundation of the composition. Through digital editing, the atmosphere, lighting and texture were manipulated and combined with the typographic underlayer. The result is a hybrid image — somewhere between painting, photography and graphic experimentation — in which reality and fiction merge.
Geert Van Baelen has been working as a press photographer in Belgium for over 20 years. Besides current affairs, he also finds inspiration for his images in everyday life, landscapes and people.