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[opticnervecollective]

POTM - Behind the Shot!

Our ‘Hidden’ themed competition winner this month is Jeffrey De Keyser of Ghent, Belgium. This shot, taken on the Seoul subway, does such a great job of telling a story, maybe even multiple stories. It's the exact kind of image we love - a moment in time perfectly encapsulated in a rectangular frame. We asked Jeffrey to tell us more about how this shot came about.

Seeing is believing, Seoul, 2015

“I took this photo on a long subway ride in Seoul back in the summer of 2015. I was going through the photos I took that day, not really paying attention to my surroundings, when all of a sudden this nun got on the train. I immediately changed my camera settings (I had been shooting in sunny conditions all day), and after 5 or 10 minutes this moment unfolded in front of me. It only took me two shots to get the scene right.

I still consider this as one of the best single photographs in my portfolio - one of those rare moments when all the elements fall into place. This photo made it to the finals of the Brussels Street Photography Festival in 2016 (where it was awarded the International Singles Public Prize) and the Italian Street Photo Festival of 2018. It was also published on LensCulture (21st Century Street Photography), The APF Magazine (APF Inspiration Awards), and 121clicks.com (Street Photography & The Art of Composition).

The photo will be part of my first solo exhibition called 'Catharsis'. The project is part of 'Fotografiecircuit Vlaanderen 2018/21′ and it will be featured in 18 exhibitions at various cultural centres across Flanders, Belgium, for two years, starting in June 2019. 'Catharsis' is conceived as an associative stream of images from the unconscious, and alternates surrealistic dream images and symbolic fragments with seemingly fading memories and sublimated desires. The photos below are the photos that come just before and just after the photo above, respectively, in the 'Catharsis' sequence.

For more of Jeffrey’s work, see: https://www.jeffreydekeyser.com/ https://www.instagram.com/jeffrey_dekeyser/