project

Introducing a personal project – prints for sale

in

Alongside my corporate and private portrait and event work, I am also involved in some exciting personal projects. Since January 2021, I’ve been working with a couple of young performance artists in woodland just outside Brussels to explore and document the space where humans and nature meet, blend and overlap.

Photo exhibition in Loonbeek church

Both the content and the collaborative process itself have been fascinating, and I’ve learned a lot. But we’ve also created some stunning photographs, which we exhibited in the village church of Loonbeek, less than a kilometre from where most of the images were made, in mid-May 2022.

A selection of the project images (including all the ones shown in the exhibition) is now available in a new gallery on this site, and are available to buy as framed or unframed prints. If you’d like one, please get in touch via the Contact page to discuss the size and support you want.

LOCKDOWN-Europe

in

Belgium was officially locked down on 18 March. We went indoors and stayed there. We stopped going to work. We stopped going to school. When we had to, we hurried out to the shops, but as soon as we could we hurried back home again. Brussels’ 1.3 million inhabitants were confined, and the additional 350,000 who normally commute into the city each day were asked to stay where they were.

Brussels was transformed. Immediately we noticed how quiet it was, and how clear the air was. And once we’d got over our initial panic, we established new routines. Those who could worked from home in casual clothes. We dug out old sets of Monopoly and long-forgotten jigsaw puzzles. We kept in touch with friends and lovers via Instagram and TikTok. We learned how to use Zoom and Jitsi, and got in touch with people we hadn’t seen in decades. We washed our windows.

And we started to inhabit our streets in a new way. We greeted neighbours and even total strangers. Bonjour jeune homme. Bonjour madame. Goedemorgen meneer. Can I help you? After all, we were all living through something remarkable, strange and difficult. We were being asked to stay inside, but when we did venture out we tended to linger – at a safe distance, of course – to ask one another’s news and exchange views on the government’s handling of the crisis. Children rode their scooters down the middle of the street. The cars had gone!

On 21 April, I was approached by a German photographer, Oliver Heinl, inviting me to take part in a Europe-wide project to document the Covid-19 lockdown. Oliver’s idea is to collaborate with one photographer in each of Europe’s 47 capital cities. He gave us ‘carte blanche’ to approach the project in any way we wanted. Each will submit six images to create a record of the European lockdown. He hopes to mount a travelling exhbition and (if he can attract funding) a publication.

All my planned jobs had been cancelled as soon as the lockdown began and I’d received no enquiries since then. So I was thrilled to be working on a real project again. I ventured out for a series of short walkabouts in my own neighbourhood of Ixelles, and I also shot people passing in my street from my front window. I explained the project to almost everybody I photographed and they loved the idea. I’ve submitted my contributions and the first photographs are already online. You can check them out on the LOCKDOWN Europe website as the project progresses.

My photographer's year

in

I had an incredible 2019, with over 50 paid photographic assignments (so far), a bunch of fascinating voluntary projects, and personal trips to Japan, France, Italy and Spain.

I did a lot of portrait work in the studio and on location, including sessions around Europe for a major prostate cancer awareness campaign. There were weddings, baptisms and confirmations, conferences and corporate events, music and dance performances, documentary projects and street photography. It’s been a blast. Overall, the year’s work amounted to more than 30,000 clicks of my various shutters.

But now October’s here, and it’s time to pick 13 images for the wall calendar that I make each year as a gift for clients, friends and family. I can’t afford to print one for everybody, so I’m going to share the images here with brief notes on the subjects and some explanations of why I chose them.

Cover, January

Cover – Shot for a corporate client at their ‘lucky number’ stand in a Brussels street party. This guy wasn’t so lucky!

January – Harpist Alejandra Paniagua from the fabulous Mexican folk band La Calandria playing at Muziekpublique.

February-March

February – Over a few weeks in the summer I participated in the Bouwen aan de Zomer summer project organised for local kids by community origanisations in Saint-Josse.

March – This is from a personal project documenting the rather faded charms of Brussels commercial galleries. I like the way the plant is imitating the posture of the statue.

April-May

April – Another of the kids from the community project in Saint-Josse. She just posed for me like that.

May – A museum of modern art in Japan. I like the way the woman’s face is tipped up towards the skylight.

June-July

June – This is one of the prostate cancer sufferers I photographed for the awareness-raising project. They have all been hugely impressive in their determination to break through the taboo surrounding the subject.

July – I loved the session with this young Congolese doctor, currently working to combat malaria in Madagascar. She was 35 the day of the shoot.

August-September

August – The end-of-course performance by students of traditional Congolese dance. I just went with the colour of the stage lighting.

September – This is the back of the Lycée Émile Jacqmain in Brussels’ Parc Léopold. The reflections in the window are of the European Parliament building.

October-December

October – Mother and child. I love the way her hand cradles his head, and her glance into the camera.

November – Belgian Pride parade 2019. I captured this moment of passion through the glass of a bus-stop. I like the way the shapes of the tagging play against the shapes of their faces.

December – The trumpet player of the Cape Verdian band Rabasa which played a hot gig in the recycling centre of Les Petits Riens as part of Muziekpublique’s Hide & Seek festival 2019.