Event
Vernissage Rudy de Moor

Photography is a strange thing despite the use of an apparatus, i.e. a technical aid, two photographers, even if they are in the same place at the same time, never photograph the same thing

Quote Inge Morath

Rudy De Moor

I was born in Belgium. Well, actually in Flanders. But that was a long time ago, on June 7, 1959, so I'm a Fleming, but I claim that my cradle was about 850 km wrong.

It all started, life sometimes takes strange turns, in Tyrol, in Ellmau. My parents and I were passing through on our way to Lake Garda. In our luggage, the brand new Voigtländer Vitoret DR. My dad had bought it to capture some travel memories and I, a snotty 9 or 10 year old, was allowed to take my first photo at the Wilder Kaiser. I was able to look at my picture at the slide show in front of our relatives who were so happy. From that moment on, I knew I was going to be a photographer.

I really got going at the HTL for photography and film. After graduating, I was allowed to call myself a photographer. It remains to be seen whether I was able to take good photos by then.

After some time in a 24-hour laboratory, where I developed negative and slide films at night, in dark rooms where you had to use infrared glasses in case of technical problems, I joined the army. After a few years as a salesman in a large photo store, a customer told me that there was a vacancy for a half-time photo lab technician at the newspaper publisher DeStandaard and Het Nieuwsblad. Of course I applied and eventually got the job. Making black and white prints, developing films, mixing products, etc.. Oh God, how I stole there. Stole with my eyes. The press photographers there were among the best in Belgium. My boss Paul Van den Abeele even won the Belgian State Prize for Fine Arts! But it was a part-time job that didn't put much bread on the table. I then started photographing on the side. Over time, I got more and more commissions and ventured into self-employment. Despite up to 250 publications in a month, a permanent position was not possible, even then there were cost-cutting measures.

I switched to Isopress-Sénépart, a press photo agency. From then on, everything was a little more international. Instead of Sepp from the snack bar, I now had writers, business people, politicians, chancellors, presidents, queens and kings in front of my lens. Being in a 4x4m room together with Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene and US President Bill Clinton has a certain charm.

Due to differences of opinion between the agency boss and myself, I returned to the newspaper world, back to self-employment. My clients were the Gazet van Antwerpen and Het Belang van Limburg, and occasionally others. I even did a few interviews for the KP party newspaper De rode Vaan.

Videohouse, a service company that provides ENG camera crews, was looking for cameramen. The transition from still images to moving images was actually quite easy. I was still taking pictures, but now with a video camera. I was mostly on the road for the news. As I already spoke some German back then, I was often assigned to the ORF office in Brussels. With Schmelzer, Jungreuthmayer, Adrowitzer and others, I was back on the road a little more internationally. EU summits, NATO summits, but also the trial of the child molester Dutroux were among my tasks. So there were also some very stressful moments in my professional life.

And then came Tyrolean love. At least that's what I thought. The love disappeared. Rudy stayed in Tyrol and worked as an offset plate developer at Artpress, a subsidiary of Koch Media, and for a very short time as a bus driver. And then again as a cameraman at Tirol TV and Re eins TV. Until I got the opportunity to work as an editorial photographer for the Tiroler Tageszeitung. Thanks to Thomas Böhm, Luis Vahrner and Mario Zenhäusern. Back to the roots, so to speak. I enjoyed it immensely, although the pandemic has also cost me a lot of nerves.

This exhibition is a cross-section of my TT time, from Bernhard Aichner to T. C. Boyle, from Georg Willi to Ban Ki-moon, from Marie Stockhausen to Enrique Gasa Valgas. Or from Paavo Järvi to Gustav Kuhn. And don't forget the water!!!