De Ontwaring (Still holding still)

In the short film Still holding still, a 19th-century photographic practice is revived, a short-lived method of making children portraits, known as ‘Invisible Mothers’. Sarah Vanagt tries to enter ‘inside’ the photos, into the long exposure time required by the first cameras.

In Waking Hours

With the publication of Ophthalmographia in 1632, Dutch doctor Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius provides a highly original answer to the age-old question “how sight works”. His answer is an invitation for experimenting: “Enter a dark room with me and, there, prepare the eye of a freshly butchered cow.” He stresses that everyone can perform this experiment at home “with minimal effort and no cost whatsoever”.

In the short film In Waking Hours, historian Katrien Vanagt walks in the shoes of a 21st-century pupil of Plempius. Her cousin, filmmaker Sarah Vanagt, is there, filming how this modern Plempia follows the instructions of her tutor step by step. In a dark kitchen in Brussels, they become witnesses to the birth of images within the eye.