A poet and photographer from Belgium, Sofie Rutten blurs the line between image and word, often capturing what language leaves behind.
As Sofie mentions regarding their writing, “I find that images can say the things I want to when words cannot find their place.”
Sofie’s work emanates melancholy, symmetry, and the raw softness of self-portraits tangled in nature and decay. Each photo feels like a question, quietly waiting to be understood and answered. There is an almost sisterhood relationship between deliberate pain and vulnerability, and in between that limbo, an intentional desire to be perceived, or more so, exposed.
is it the red stained money
— feral veracity
under
the pillow
you use to
smother voices
and screams
that
helps you
sleep at
night?
is it the lullabies
of
dying children
that soothes your
heavy lids
while
you
count
and
murder
sheep that fight?
*
my thorns prick
those
with
balloon souls.
Tender questions about brutality stab into a poignant chasm between determination and desperation. Barbarity must be loud enough to drown out the screams of the tortured, while sensitivity soothes the pain of it with whispers of artistic forms.
Read our “Tenderness” issue in full
In this debut issue, 16 artists from around the world took part in an editorial experiment where the theme emerged organically from the submitted artworks, shaped by what they had in common, and not predefined by editors.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
