Jan Rosseel Belgium, 1979

Through the use of photographs, video and objects, Rosseel re-contextualises historical events that inherently implicate ideas of memory and the act of remembering; stories such as the series of violent robberies of numerous Belgian supermarkets in 1985 or more recently, the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Such tales ask questions about the reliability of the accounts that we are presented with, and even more so of the reliability of our own memory and brain. Rosseel consciously works as an investigator, using methods of scientific research and journalism to build his own narrative where fact and fiction coexist.  
 
Jan Rosseel studied documentary photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, the Netherlands and Photojournalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus, Denmark. He was the first artist to be awarded a research fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences. His pictures have been published in the New York Times, Le Monde, IMA Magazine, Esquire Russia, L’Echo, De Volkskrant / Volkskrant Magazine, Vrij Nederland, de Morgen, Le Vif, de Standaard / DS Magazine, De Tijd, P/f, PhotoQ, GUP Magazine, Huffington Post and FOAM Magazine. He is a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague and has been guest lecturer at the Master of Photography AKV St. Joost in Breda and MA Photography Luca School of Arts in Brussels.

Portrait by © I. Elfilali