M HKA Ensembles

° 1958

Born in Hasselt (BE).

Bernaded Dexters was born in 1958 in Hasselt, Belgium. She studied fine arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and received her photography diploma at the Technicum in Antwerp. During annual courses, under the tutelage of Eikoh Hosoe and Ralph Gibson at Arles, she perfected her technique. Her works were included in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and in 1978 her oeuvre received the Provincial Prize in Antwerp. She later specialised in concert and portrait photography and exhibited at several galleries, including: Klisjee in Antwerp, Ligna in Malines and Sol Y Sombra in Ghent. In Antwerp she appeared in ‘Metro ‘89’ and in De Foyer during the ‘Summer of Photography ‘90’. She also participated in the ‘Polsslagfestival ‘90’ and the ‘Photo Circuit ‘91’, a travelling exhibition in Belgium. Also worth mentioning is her work in the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels.

In her concert photography Dexters manages to capture the tension of the performance in a single shot.  Musicians are portrayed on the cutting edge. Action becomes expression.
What makes her pictures so fascinating is the direct representation of the power that lies hidden in the strong personalities on stage.
Dexters’ alchemy renders music visible: sound becomes image and she does this so intensely that the image appears to bring forth the sounds that are caught inside. A perfect interaction that shows  the mutual trust between the camera lens and the band, translated onto photo paper. Or, as the groups describe it themselves “Bernaded makes music with a camera!”
This makes Bernaded an increasingly popular portrait photographer in the American “Metal Underground” scene.