Carlo Van De Roer's Pools

Recent Hey, Hot Shot! winner Carlo Van De Roer's series of abandoned swimming pools explore once social spaces that have been deserted. The subsequent function of these emptied pools is becomes largely ambiguous, some being transformed into "bogs, homes or gardens", while others vacantly remain without a practical purpose. Van De Roer asserts that:

"When full, the surface of a swimming pool is a flat continuation of the pool edge, obscuring what is below the surface. When drained, the depths are revealed — allowing us to examine the empty pool postmortem. These locations were once bustling social environments, and visiting them was a collective, public experience. Now deserted by swimmers, the experience of visiting these pools is solitary, still and private."









Photographs from the series Pools

All Images © Carlo Van De Roer