How a Childhood Diary and a Forgotten Photo Became the Heart of Bieke Depoorter’s Most Personal Work
(This is the story behind the photograph—a glimpse into the moment, the process, and the vision that brought it to life.)
What can one photo teach you about memory and truth?
Bieke Depoorter was nearly finished with her book when she found an old diary from her childhood. Inside was a moment she had forgotten: the first time she ever took a photo of the moon, at 14, with her father’s camera.
She had tried to capture the moon, her window, and her handprints on the glass, believing that this picture could explain her feelings. That forgotten photo ended up changing the final shape of her most personal work. It brought her back to a time when she still believed a photo could be proof.
Can a childhood photo explain a lifetime of photography?
A Photograph of the Moon
From “Blinked Myself Awake” by Bieke Depoorter
Martin: It was one of the last images added to the book. By then, most of Blinked Myself Awake was already complete. The pages had been sequenced. The structure was in place. But something from long ago came back: a memory, a diary, and an old photograph, almost forgotten.
The image showed a quiet bedroom window, with curtains slightly open. Behind the glass: the night sky. A tiny moon. In the foreground, faint handprints pressed onto the windowpane. At first glance, the photo looked simple. But for Bieke, it held everything.
Bieke: “I remembered that I have a diary from when I was young and I think I always felt afraid to look in this diary. But then I found, when this book was finished, somehow I had the strength to go through this diary. I found it back and I went through it.”
The diary had been hidden away for years. As she turned the pages, Bieke discovered something she had completely forgotten: a handwritten entry describing a night when she was just 14. That night, she had been staring at the moon from her bedroom. Something about it made her reach for a camera.
“I write about my admiration for the moon. Then I go downstairs to grab my first camera, a gift from my father, and I take my first ever photo of the moon.”
She didn’t just take a picture. She tried to frame it with care—her window, the moon, and her handprints on the glass. In her diary, she wrote about what she hoped the photo would mean.
“I conclude the diary entry by writing that I hope if someone ever secretly reads it, they will need to see this picture too. Otherwise, they will never understand how I felt tonight.”
She found the picture again while revisiting the diary. Looking at it now, as an adult and a professional photographer, she saw it differently. The photo had a soft, personal quietness. But it also carried the dream of what photography could do and what it meant to her, even then.
“It kind of shows my belief in photography in a way.”
As a teenager, she believed photography was proof. That if she photographed the moon, others could feel what she felt. But over the years, that belief changed. Images didn’t always capture the truth. Memory shifted. Feelings changed. And sometimes, the photo didn’t say everything she wanted it to say.
“When I was 14, somehow I must have strongly believed in the image and photography and proof… And now I kind of… yeah, for me, photography is not like… I think photography is still important for me because it helps me to look and to understand and to research and to engage with things, but… I don’t believe in the fact that it’s proof or something or that it can help me to remember things or so because I had some disappointments already.”
Even so, the image stayed in the book. Not because it was perfect or technically impressive, but because it felt true to the spirit of the work. It was a self-portrait of someone becoming a photographer, without even knowing it.
“For me, it’s interesting to see my 14-year-old self writing about photography, not knowing I would ever study photography or that photography would be so important in my life.”
On the cover of that old diary:
“The concealed secret. The memory will not be gone for all life.”
She didn’t know then that the moon, the window, and her handprints would someday become part of a published book. Or that they would still speak to her quietly and truthfully, decades later.
