As sweet as it gets

Sunday afternoon we went on a quick trip to Brussels to go and see the Michaël Borremans exhibition in the BOZAR, the centre of fine arts and I was really deeply intrigued by his paintings. I was not really familiar with his work, so it was a meaningful discovery. I had won these tickets through an online competition of the Hotel Bloom and I am really happy we took the time to go and see it (it was the last day of the expo, so lots of people). Sunday is also the best day to visit Brussels in my opinion, there are no traffic jams, you can see the pace of life of its inhabitants in their local hangouts. It all seems a little less grey and depressing, or maybe that was just because the sun was shining. We also had tickets for another expo 'Where we're at: other voices on gender' that tries to give us an outlook on gender, sexuality and self-representation in other cultures. There were some pictures there that really caught my attention because they were so out of our stereo -type thinking. Of course when you go to a museum with a toddler, you have to go to the different rooms a little faster and you have less time to read all the poems and watch the video's, since she was running around like a crazy person, but maybe somewhere in her head we can trigger a little interest for the arts and culture.

Dial M for Murder

This afternoon we went to an exhibition at the FOMU- The photography museum in Antwerp for an expo that triggered my imagination: 'Murder is my business' - Weegee. I like murder stories. He is renowned for his sensational images of assassinations, fires, accidents, brawls and orgies. His flash mercilessly captures the events, plain and outspoken. The exhibition focuses on his dramatic black-and-white images of the New York crime scene of the 1930s and 1940s, which set the standard for what has become known as tabloid journalism.

 

 This must have been such an interesting period in NYC. You see the backgrounds of the murders and it has so much charm to it. ln 1938, Weegee was the only New York newspaper reporter with a permit to have a portable police-band shortwave radio. He maintained a complete darkroom in the trunk of his car, to expedite getting his free-lance product to the newspapers.  He listened closely to the police radio and often beat authorities to the scene, which led to these interesting shots.

Bang bang, he shot me down
bang bang, I hit the ground
bang bang, that awful sound
bang bang, my baby shot me down
(That was the song in my head throughout the expo)