
21/08/2025
Non Fiction
by Henri Kisielewski
“To give truth the colour and narrative force of fiction,” this was Truman Capote’s ambition when he wrote “In Cold Blood”, the true account of a quadruple homicide in 1960s Kansas. This is the starting point for Non Fiction, a work of lyrical documentary that explores the porous boundary between fact and fiction in photography.
The premise is simple: is it possible to photograph the world as it is – through chance encounters and local news stories – and create a series that feels like fiction?
Since its beginnings, photography has had a complex relation to truth: even the most ‘objective’ portraits will necessarily involve decisions relating to location, light and pose. In Non Fiction, this tension is pushed to its extreme through a variety of visual strategies, deployed to blur the lines. In the current context of conspiracy theories, fake news and AI generated imagery it is more pertinent than ever to reflect on our relationship with reality and how it is mediated through images.
In Non Fiction images based on chance encounters accumulate and coalesce, forming a narrative that is fluid and multidirectional. It is up to the audience to interpret this narrative, to find keys into it. Framed in this way, daily life is transformed: every window hides secrets, every person becomes a protagonist, every object becomes a clue or a piece of evidence.
It’s all true, it’s all false, but one thing is certain: truth is at least as strange as fiction.
on view on our magazine online
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