- PIERRE CROCQUET

PIERRE CROCQUET

PINKY PROMISE

"A pinky promise is when you speak to a friend and say, please tell me everything and I promise on my pinky that I won't tell anyone else. It's a big promise (...) and you would never break it. You say "pinky promise" and hook your pinky on your friend's pinky. My dad hooked his pinky on mine and I didn't tell anyone else." (Hayley, 14)

Pinky Promise is photographer Pierre Crocquet's impressive and thought-provoking project about the sexual abuse of children in South Africa. First exhibited in Germany in 2012, his photographs are being presented again at the Seippel Gallery in Cologne, almost 11 years after his death.

This extraordinary project, which is accompanied by a book of the same name published by HatjeCantz, was the result of three intensive years of rapprochement, photography and countless personal interviews with the victims, perpetrators, family members, criminal investigators, doctors and therapists involved in the project.

Eight very different stories from five victims and three perpetrators are presented with great sensitivity and in an attempt to be as impartial as possible. They all tell of sexual abuse, the wounds and traumas of both victims and perpetrators, as well as the circumstances that can ultimately contribute to a possible slow "healing" of these wounds.

Crocquet's haunting and empathetic black and white photographs are complemented by numerous letters, family photos, diary entries and similar documents from the lives of the people portrayed. Without judgment, his photographs deal with the stories of the victims and perpetrators. The memories reveal trauma and healing on both sides. Victims and perpetrators share a secret - through the enforced promise to remain silent, symbolized in the mutual crossing of little fingers: Pinky Promise. The act of abuse crystallizes into a past that cannot be allowed to pass, but must last forever. Thus, Pierre's present scenes appear in black and white, while the personal documents, such as family albums, light up in vivid color.

"I hope that Pinky Promise will shed light on the trauma of childhood sexual abuse and the conditions under which healing is possible." (Pierre Crocquet)

Throughout the project, Pierre Crocquet was in close contact with experts who had been working with victims of child sexual abuse and perpetrators for a long time. These experts also supported Pierre Crocquet with legal and ethical advice. He was always aware that he was entering extremely difficult territory as a "non-specialist". Pinky Promise therefore does not claim to be able to describe the phenomenon of child abuse comprehensively or even conclusively. Rather, the photographer's aim is to use the stories presented to raise awareness of this complex social and global problem, which is reaching truly epidemic proportions in some parts of the world. With this exhibition, Pierre Crocquet also wanted to raise awareness of the need to safeguard children's rights to integrity and a non-violent private sphere.

"I think the truth is very difficult - or even impossible - to get out of any subject. So I wanted to convey a sense of that. To do that, I had to involve both the victims of abuse and the perpetrators." (Pierre Crocquet)

Pierre Crocquet was born in Cape Town in 1971, but grew up in a small town west of Johannesburg. After his studies in Cape Town, he went to London to study photography at the London College of Printing. After returning to South Africa in 2001, he devoted his photographic work in particular to the lives of people in South Africa and on the African continent. In 2013, the artist died in a tragic car accident. The exhibition is dedicated to his memory.

"I am a storyteller. I don't so much choose subjects to photograph, but people, and tell their stories. Subjects etc. emerge from their stories, or whatever is to be told is told." (Pierre Crocquet)

Pinky Promise, Hatje Cantz, ISBN 978-3-7757-3173-7

Biography

Pierre was born in Cape Town in 1971 and grew up in Klerksdorp, a mining town west of Johannesburg. He dutifully followed his parents' wishes and studied finance at the University of Cape Town and became a chartered accountant.

In 1996, he left South Africa for London to take up a position at the then Chase Manhattan Merchant Bank. Initially Pierre thought this was a dream job, but in a letter home he wrote: "The money paid here is obscenely high, but I hate the work. I can't see that what I'm producing is meaningful and I feel like I'm not leaving anything of value."

He gave up banking and studied photography at the London College of Printing. Pierre longed for his homeland and returned to South Africa shortly after the turn of the millennium, where he focused his work on life in South Africa and on the African continent. Two books, Us (2002) and On Africa Time (2003), were publisheed.

In early 2002 Pierre discovered South African jazz and spent the next few years photographing the artists who produced the sounds he loved. The Standard Bank Art Gallery took notice of his work, purchased 25 large prints and held an exhibition entitled "Sound Check" in 2005. In the same year, a book sponsored by the bank was published with the same name.

Pierre spent a lot of time in Karatara/Western Cape from 2005 to 2007. Karatara is a tiny settlement on the edge of the Knysna Forest. Originally founded to house forestry workers, the population has dwindled with the decline of the industry.

Those who remain seem somehow lost in time, part of a forgotten era. The residents were wary at first, and it took a while before they allowed themselves to be photographed. His portraits from this time are compassionate, empathetic and captivating. The exhibition of Karatara's work, entitled Enter Exit, has been successfully exhibited in the USA, Pretoria Art Museum, Sasol Art Gallery University Stellenbosch, Galerie Seippel, Moba Art Gallery Brussels, among others. The exhibition was accompanied by a book of the same name published by HatjeCantz Verlag.

In 2009, Pierre began work on his latest work, the award-winning Pinky Promise. The work photographically documented the personal stories of three paedophiles and five victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The book Pinky Promise was published in 2011 in Germany by HatjeCantz Verlag and in South Africa by Fourthwall Book. The exhibition of the same name was shown at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2011/2012), Seippel Gallery Johannesburg (2011/2012), Galerie Seippel Cologne, Stadtmuseum Tübingen (2013). The exhibition was highly praised by critics and the book was shortlisted for the Alan Paton Prize.

Years of working on such an intensive project left Pierre creatively burnt out. In November 2012, he began a six-month retreat in a remote Buddhist center. He meditated 14 hours a day, ate very sparingly and chose to remain silent in the final months. Two weeks before the end of the retreat, Pierre began to show signs of a mental disorder and severe paranoia.

On the night of May 1, 2013, he left, wearing only a pair of shorts, and made his way to the nearby town of Groot Marico. He was walking on the highway when he was killed in a hit-and-run accident at 2 a.m. on May 2 at the age of 42.

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