JACQUES SONCK : Untitled, 1988

Jacques Sonck (b. 1949, Belgium) captures 'archetypes' in his portraits.

Sonck studied photography at the Narafi in Brussels, Belgium and is one of the first generation of photographers who received formal training lifts. 

Besides his professional activities (until recently he was a photographer at the Culture Department of the Province of Antwerp), he devoted himself since the mid-1970s on personal projects. He makes penetrating street and studio portraits of prominent figures from all walks of life. In his pictures he goes in search of archetypes. Classical portraits in the style of Diane Arbus. Without judging Jacques Sonck confronts the viewer with charming and disgusting individuals: loners, eccentrics, drop-outs and deformed. Soncks refined black-white images contain a surprising, often anachronistic aesthetics with remarkable documentary character. Diversity in all its shapes within the human species is depicted in an understated way, without melancholy, compassion or the intent to ridicule.