Dirk Braeckman. A-Prior. Ghent: Kurt Vanbelleghem, 2002. Softcover, approx. 256 pp. First edition. Text in English, Dutch translations in the back. Illustrated in black and white and color. 23.5 × 17 × 2 cm.
Edition of 2,000 copies.
Covers show light wear and minor fraying along upper and lower right corners; interior clean and bright. Binding sound, spine straight and unbroken. A Good–Very Good copy overall.
A-Prior No. 7: a monographic issue on Belgian photographer Dirk Braeckman
A-Prior No. 7 is a monographic issue devoted to Belgian photographer Dirk Braeckman, published by editor and curator Kurt Vanbelleghem in 2002. The issue contains an extensive sequence of Braeckman’s photographs, printed in both color and black and white.
It contains three substantial essays: Blind Auto-Reflexivity: Dirk Braeckman’s Light on Photography by Frank Vande Veire, Intimate Handling: The Work of Dirk Braeckman by Cherry Smith, and Skinning Architecture: The Generic Tactility of Dirk Braeckman by Steven Jacobs.
It also contains critical essays and literary texts in English and Dutch. Contributors include Frank Vande Veire, Peter Verhelst, Steven Jacobs, and Cherry Smith, who examine Braeckman’s practice as a meditation on texture, light, and photographic surface. The publication situates his work within early-twenty-first-century European art and remains one of the key early monographs on the artist.
About Dirk Braeckman
Dirk Braeckman (b. 1958, Eeklo, Belgium) is known for his large-scale, meditative photographic prints that explore atmosphere, materiality, and the limits of photographic perception. Working primarily in shades of gray and muted tones, Braeckman transforms ordinary interiors and anonymous subjects into liminal studies presence, showing where it becomes matter and absence.
Represented by Zeno X Gallery and a regular exhibitor at major international venues, including the Venice Biennale (Belgian Pavilion, 2017, his work forms a cornerstone of post-minimalist and conceptual photography in Europe. Braeckman’s oeuvre investigates how photography can evoke memory and intimacy without narrative, situating him among the most influential European photographers of his generation.