Waterschei, Belgium 2006

Editor: Right now, we're looking at Witho Worms' 2006 gelatin-silver print, "Waterschei, Belgium". The entire scene has this sepia-toned wash, and it makes this almost perfectly triangular structure in the middle look so heavy and still. I can’t help but feel a bit dwarfed looking at this, what's your take? Curator: Dwarfed is a wonderful word for it! It evokes, for me, the simultaneous fragility and tenacity of nature against… well, the marks we leave. Think about it: Waterschei, once a thriving coal-mining town, now this quietly imposing, artificial mountain. You see the delicate impressionistic strokes in the bare trees? Almost like the landscape is trying to reclaim it, but the structure remains. Is it a scar? A monument? Both? Editor: I hadn’t thought of it as both, that’s interesting. A monument to what, exactly? Curator: Perhaps a monument to industry's ambition, to transformation. But a monument that whispers of nature’s persistence too. It's melancholic, yes, but there is beauty there too, don't you think? A kind of stark poetry. Worms seems to be less interested in depicting reality and more focused on rendering emotion with that ghostly monochrome palette. What does it make you feel? Editor: It does feel… contradictory, now that you point it out. It makes me think about how quickly things change, how something built for one purpose becomes something entirely different. Curator: Exactly! That mutability...the invitation to reflect on the life cycles of places, ideas… Editor: It is strangely calming, despite being… an industrial scar. Curator: A paradox indeed. And that’s where, I think, the art resides. Finding beauty, finding contemplation, where we least expect it. It invites us to question the stories we tell about the places we inhabit.