Brussels, 2005 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories
The neurotic fuss, rapid progress and drastic changes make me sad ...
From November 24th, 2011, to March 1st, 2012, Hilaneh von Kories Gallery in
Hamburg will present a new exhibit titled BELGICUM with images by Belgian
photographer Stephan Vanfleteren.
It began twenty years ago and became a one of a kind undertaking, which
turned into an unusual hommage to his home country. The Latin title BELGICUM
means “Belgian” and is the all-encompassing tag line to what Stephan Vanfleteren
discovered during his many travels deep into his home country. Belgium was
carved out of the southern provinces of the so-called Low Countries in 1830 in
spite of the fact that the area had to merge two different cultural identities.
One is french-speaking and Catholic, influenced by the southern neighbor country
France. The other one is Flamish-speaking and Protestant adjacent to the
Netherlands.
When Vanfleteren started his mission he was looking to discover meaningful
moments in the daily lives of people. And so he went to every corner of Belgium,
where he captured a multi-faceted and distinctive caleidoscope of portraits and
landscapes and telling moments. 40 of these images have been selected for his
Hamburg exhibit.
These images are touching, because Vanfleteren always takes his camera very
close to the people he photographs, which bring out their character and their
faces rather strongly. The results give the impression that Belgium has a huge
reservoir of true originals, many of them rough and headstrong types. They look
as if they are cut-outs from a time, when time stood still.
Vanfleteren’s exploration produces images that are timeless, melancholic
and strangely distant. That is because he does not shoot in the capital city of
Brussels but strives for regular folks in the rural parts far away from the
paths that tourists travel and with no inkling to be folksy. Still, these images
say much more about the country as a whole and the people call themselves
Belgians than any tourism brochure.
Vanfleteren began his project when he worked for a newspaper. It became an
ongoing “through a scarred country trapped in its perpetual search for a
national identity”. His own search is moored in a personal traumatic story from
his younger days, when he witnessed how small fishing communities were turned
into concrete jungles. “I am saddened by neurotic fuss, hurried progress and
drastic changes”, he says. So, with his camera, he slows everything down and
brings the unique and whimsical to the fore, knowing full well that eventually
it will vanish.
Stephan Vanfleteren was born in 1969 and studied photography at the Sint-
Lukas in Brussels. In 1993 he started his career as a free-lance photographer
working in a radical black-and-white style, much appreciated by national and
international publications such as The New York Times, Le Monde, Paris Match and
Die Zeit. His travels brought him to Colombia, the United States, Ethiopia,
Kosovo, and Afghanistan. He won numerous awards including the World Press Photo
award and the Henri Nannen award in 2011. His images have been shown in many
exhibits and published in a number of books, besides “BELGICUM”, like
“Flandrien”, “Tales of a Globalizing World”, “Portret 1989-2009” and
“Elvis&Presley”.
Madonna, 2001 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories
Oostduinkerke, 2006 | © Stephan Vanfleteren/Galerie Hilaneh von Kories
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