PHOTO LONDON 2025

DAVID DE BEYTER

SOLO SHOW

BELIEF DEFECT

For this 10th edition of Photo London, Galerie Bacqueville is pleased to present a solo exhibition by David De Beyter entitled Belief Defect, featuring a selection of previously unseen works from his series "The Skeptics".

With "The Skeptics", David De Beyter takes us to the volcanic landscapes of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, where ancient beliefs and contemporary myths intertwine. Through a combination of photographs, archival images, and an immersive video installation accompanied by a Drone music soundtrack, the artist reconstructs and ultimately deconstructs the modern mythology of UFOs.

His practice operates at the intersection of documentary photography and re-enactment, drawing from scientific ufology, an amateur discipline dedicated to the study of unidentified aerial phenomena. This field has fostered a community of “skeptics” who challenge the photographic medium—prone to accidents and distortions—sometimes interpreting its flaws as evidence of extraterrestrial existence.

Whether working in the darkroom or digitally, De Beyter engages with ufological archives, reinterpreting their errors and visual motifs: dazzling flares, luminous streaks, and indistinct flying forms. Through this process, he performatively questions the nature of captured reality and the very notion of photographic “truth.”

"The Skeptics" was presented as part of the Prix Découverte Louis Roederer at the Rencontres d'Arles 2019 and was the subject of a solo exhibition at Unbound / Unseen 2021 in Amsterdam. The series also won the Institut pour la photographie’s Research Program, which dedicated a solo exhibition to it in 2023, as well as the PHMuseum Prize in Bologna in September 2024. The artist is currently preparing a book on this series, to be published by RVB Books in January 2025.