Can you name a Belgian photographer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s probably a question most would struggle with, though there are quite a few. Dirk Braeckman, Martine Franck, Harry Gruyaert, Fran\u00e7ois Hers, Tomas van Houtryve, L\u00e9onard Misonne, are among those who have Wikipedia pages<\/a> that I’ve heard of – and Agn\u00e8s Varda though I only know her as a film-maker (who can forget ‘Cleo from 5 to 7’ and more.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m not entirely sure why, according to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Belgium<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>is the rudest word in the\u00a0Universe, as well as being by some strange coincidence, also the name of a country on\u00a0Earth.\u00a0 I’ve only visited it briefly and found it a slightly odd experience, but that may just have been the beer (and there is chocolate too), surprisingly well-ordered for a country with two language groups who at times seem hardly to speak to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But one outstanding omission from Wikipedia’s list is that of Stephan Vanfleteren<\/a>, born in 1969 and recognised as one of Belgium’s most celebrated photographers whose rather surreal view of his country and its people was published in 2007 in the book Belgicum <\/em>(the Latin name of the country), “A melancholic trip to a country that for the most part no longer exists<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was reminded of this work yesterday by an e-mail from 28 Vignon St<\/a><\/em>, a new curated online art platform, named for the Paris address of the first gallery opened in 1907 by the famous art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (1884 – 1979) who was one of the early supporters of Picasso, Braque and other modern artists. They have an online show of his work<\/a>, with a link to a video from FOMU <\/a>(Fotomuseum Antwerp) where Vanfleteren’s current show ‘Present<\/em>‘ is now also only virtual. You can watch a series of three videos beginning here on Vimeo<\/a> where they have English subtitles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was given another reminder of Vanfleteren’s work this morning when my day started unexpectedly with digging a small grave in the garden. On his web site you can view his series Nature Morte<\/a>, (Still Life to Anglophones) with the bodies of dead animals tastefully posed. The body of a fox we found at the bottom of our garden was rather messier, killed in a fight probably with another fox, its stomach opened and flesh and fur missing, not a pretty sight. I didn’t feel like photographing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can you name a Belgian photographer? It’s probably a question most would struggle with, though there are quite a few. Dirk Braeckman, Martine Franck, Harry Gruyaert, Fran\u00e7ois Hers, Tomas van Houtryve, L\u00e9onard Misonne, are among those who have Wikipedia pages that I’ve heard of – and Agn\u00e8s Varda though I only know her as a … Continue reading Belgicum<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1857,1856,1851,1226,1855,1852,1858,60,1854,1853],"class_list":["post-10762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","tag-28-vignon-st","tag-antwerp","tag-belgicum","tag-belgium","tag-fomu","tag-nature-morte","tag-online-art","tag-photographers","tag-present","tag-still-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10762"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10769,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions\/10769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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