Joost Vandebrug is a Dutch artist based in Antwerp. His practice pushes photography into a hybrid territory where image, memory, and material process converge. At the core of his methodology is the emulsion transfer: the fragile photographic “skin” is carefully separated from its original carrier and manually transferred onto Japanese handcrafted paper and cards. This act is both technical and intimate—the image becomes a membrane stretched between states, transformed through touch and fragility.
Many works consist of multiple emulsion-transferred fragments arranged into modular landscapes that do not correspond to a single physical place. Instead, they construct composite terrains, emotional rather than geographical, where memory is layered, interrupted, and reassembled. The use of Japanese paper deepens this effect: its absorbent, fibrous surface softens the transferred image, making it feel as if it has been breathed onto the material.
In some works, fragments are mounted with galvanised pins, thereby elevating the work into the sculptural space. The slight separation from the wall introduces a quiet shadow-play, suggesting that these landscapes hover—like recollections that have not fully settled. The pins also underline the provisional nature of memory: held together, but never entirely secure.
Some works develop further, with their emulsion-transferred fragments suspended in epoxy resin. This process freezes the delicacy of the photographic skin within a transparent, solid matrix. The tension is striking: the photograph’s most fragile part—the surface—is sealed within an industrial, almost geological material. It becomes a preserved artefact, a memory core locked in a clear sediment.
By relocating the emulsion from one material body to another, VANDEBRUG performs a literal dislocation—a shift that mirrors how memory operates: transferable, fragmentary, and vulnerable to distortion. His landscapes resist fixed interpretation; they offer no single perspective. Instead, they create a psychological space where time, place, and sensation intersect. Through emulsion transfer, handcrafted paper, pinned construction, and resin suspension, VANDEBRUG reshapes photographic language. These works exist as image-objects, bearing the traces of both the landscape and the artist’s hand. They feel less like depictions and more like preserved states of remembering—quiet, layered, and profoundly human.