About René Dissel
About René Dissel
René Dissel photographer
As a child, Dissel photographed everything with a plastic Kodak camera, which began with a fascination for both nature and airplanes. During his busy life as a musician, he picked up the camera again and won first prize in landscape for National Geographic 2007 titled ‘catch a plane”captured while touring the u.s with the band Praful.
From then on the camera has been impossible to imagine without, influenced by art and photographers like Irving Penn and many others, he started working on his own creations.
In 2014 an impressive book came out with 50 portraits in black and white “meetings with Amersfoorters” with analog cameras in collaboration with journalist Herma Klein Kranenberg. From portraits to abstract minimalist work, his work became more and more colorful, but black and white stays his main output.
Technique arises from creativity, the camera is only a means to express a feeling and an atmosphere with an image, he reports in an interview. With his love for water, the sea, lakes and rivers, he created a series of fine art images over the last ten years “Seascapes,” the images exude a sense of Zen, quiet flowing spaces. While making the series it became clearer that the surroundings he took photo’s of is created by humans or mostly what is left by humans.
The sunken speedboat was in a sense a literal symbolic gift, an epiphany, it is time to slow down and think of how to connect to life.and nature. While photographing people in and underwater, new insights arose that led to an expansion of his work. The reflection of an image on the water surface which is constantly in motion is an inspiration to capture the image not only in a digital photo file but also physically on paper. Besides paper he also experimented with photos in ice called frozen melted as an answer to the situation we are facing on earth. Observing the beauty in the continuous changing chaos being in the presence while shifting to a new dimension.
These series are inspired by climate change or global warming if you want, with the question where are we and can we really take actions, what footprint do we leave behind without judgement. Reflecting just like the water surface and then go deeper there we will find the art in stillness, be like water and feel reborn.
Sometimes i feel frozen in a melting process while in this journey reflecting on my personal circumstances in this world a whole lot is happening.
With these artworks ‘be like water’ we like to pay tribute and respect to our life source, grateful for all its beauty.
Connect to the source of life, be like water, heal and transform.
Some exhibitions;
2007 1st price NG
2008 group art exhibition hotel stories in museum Coda Apeldoorn
2012 solo exhibition seascapes Eemhuis Amersfoort
2014 book 50 portraits in black and white ‘ontmoetingen met amersfoorters’
2014 solo exhibition Eemhuis ontmoetingen met amersfoorters
2015 group exhibition 033fotostad Sint Joriskerk
2016 solo exhibition St Agten kapel Amersfoort
2018 popup gallerie Sandvoort Amsterdam
2020 solo exhibition seascapes slot Zeist
2021 popup gallery Sandvoort Den Haag
2021 exhibition time to slow down Rietveld paviljoen
2022 1 photo at BBA gallery Berlin
2022 exhibition we are water Rietveld paviljoen organized together with my son audio/visual artist Victor Dissel
2023 Art Basel Novum Basel, group art exhibition Klima Kunst, waterbodies
2023 BBA finalist for a solo exhibition ‘be like water’ at Berlin nov
several nominations at lensculture discoveries
some galleries;
Sandvoortgallery
online galleries;
Artwista Berlin
Tricera Tokyo
Saatchi art NY
Artid
Open for a gallery with a heart for art
Commisions;
Coverart and many portraits for different musicians and artists, writers and journalists for Murrow publisher Amsterdam
Website;
insta; disselfoto