Tout est chaos. Unrest prevails, in the photo series as in Valérie Naessens’ daily life. But although impressions of the world come in twice as hard, the photographer refuses to let them upset her. In ‘I never go around mirrors’ Valérie confronts her unrest and examines the melting pot of emotions she experiences every day.

The series consists of 11 photographs that give language to the mirror palace of her mind. Using different layers, colours, textures and reflections, she lifts a tip of the veil in each image. But nothing is what it seems. For instance, Valérie deliberately keeps her self-portraits vague. Her appearance gives a distorted picture of how she feels inside.  Emptiness and overexposure are the main expressions of chaos. Overexposure represents that overstimulation. In white surfaces, details are lost and everything is unfathomable. You find nothing there and have to seek isolation to regain clarity of vision. 

The movement in her images embodies the rhythm at which life rushes by. That speed leaves a haze in which certain memories are lost. Noise represents events that are difficult to reconstruct, sharpness represents moments that are easier to catch.

In other photo series, Valérie mainly uses soft colours that blend into each other. Here, she does not. Hard colours rule and shoot in all directions. In ‘I never go around mirrors’, harmony is not an issue. All emotions are allowed to be there. There is always room for light and that is precisely why the images do not tell a heavy and sombre story.

Trees are also a recurring subject. When it blows, the wind shakes their crown, sometimes a branch breaks off, but usually the roots remain firmly anchored in the earth. Very occasionally the wind dies down and there is peace: her absolute pursuit.