Here Belgian documentary-based photographer Hendrik Braet share images from his series The Edge. Following his self-coined motto “It all happens close to you”, he examines what’s on his doorstep – bringing a precision and order to oft-ignored corners of his suburban surroundings, and in doing so elevating the banal into something strangely alluring. Curiously absent of human life, they are nonetheless defined by its presence, and together form a subtle ode to urbanism, and an intense need to escape from it. Beyond the mundane exists something sublime, and Braet stands at its edge… 

These images were taken on the outskirts of my town Ghent, in which I am searching for a feeling of a horizon in a densely built environment. Lacking a sense of open landscape in the city ensures that people live soberly and make too little space to realise their dreams. For me, taking photographs is reducing everything until there is only a minimal representation of reality. In the ‘excess’ we live in there is always a need for more minimalism. As a result we witness a series of images in which color, form and surrealism are placed centrally.