Drawing on a notion of speculative documentary, Max Pinckers’ artistic practice interjects on present and historical debates, dancing on the boundaries between fact, fiction, speculation and imagination to reflect on the ways truth and reality are represented in photography. Dealing with documentary photography’s complicated relationship with ethics and aesthetics, his dissertation explores theatricality and the in-person reenactment as possible artistic strategies for weaving historical narratives with personal testimony. Playing a double role, his work both engages with a particular subject matter while always critically reflecting on the limits of documentary—it emphasizes conjecture rather than knowledge by embracing its inherent uncertainty.

Along with a written dissertation, Pinckers’ PhD project resulted in the following works: Mau Mau, History Makers (2015-ongoing), Double Reward (2021), Red Ink (2017-2018), Margins of Excess (2016-2018), Controversy (2017), Trophy Camera v0.9 (2017), and Two Kinds of Memory and Memory Itself (2015).

Max Pinckers’ research was financed by the HOGENT Arts Research Fund.