Book of Hours

In Book of Hours, Joost Vandebrug enlarges and reworks individual cards from his larger photographic compositions. Each fragment becomes an independent work, exploring how scale changes what we see and how a detail can come to hold the memory of a larger image.

Memory often gives small things a disproportionate amount of space. We may lose the shape of a room yet remember the light on one wall. A detail remains while its surroundings become less certain. Over time, that detail can come to hold our sense of the whole place.

These works allow a similar shift in importance. The original composition remains part of their history, but we can encounter them without knowing it. An edge that once met another card becomes the boundary of a new image. What lies beyond it is left to us.

Returning to the cards also means returning to earlier decisions. Something passed over in the first work becomes a reason to begin again. Enlargement makes those details available for another period of attention, another process of making.

There is an intimacy in this repeated looking. An image can be familiar for years and still contain something we have barely noticed. Book of Hours grows from giving that small discovery enough room to change the work.