A Visit at the BELGICUM Exhibition

It’s not often that a photogapher is himself so photogenic and so charismatic as Stephan Vanfleteren. This is the first of two interviews with him and it’s really worth watching both.

Vanfleteren’s work is readily identifiable as his own: Classical and documentary portraits, some landscapes, all in rich black and white tones, often with a thick black line inside a white border and mounted in a black frame. Stunning, compelling images.

The interview takes place in his exhibition ‘BELGICUM’ and he begins by talking about how this project came to be. It is an overview of 15 years of his photography in Belgium. A personal, nostalgic, melancholic view. “Just the way I see it“.

Not may photographers do projects on their own country so he’s quite happy about that. As a press photographer he’s seen a lot ot the world but, as he says, “You forget about your own country. And especially while Belgium is so small. It’s like being a boxer – this is your ring, your territory where it all has to happen. And Belgium’s a strange country.”

Some of the photographs were ‘stolen’ from the street. But in the main they are taken in the intimacy of poor people’s homes. Sometimes, Vanfleteren says, he was the first visitor they had had in weeks or months. It is charachteristic of him that he “kind of became friends with them and visited them again” when he was in the neighbourhood. “I feel comfortable with these people, more than sitting with a banker.” Everyone in this exhibition portrayed with dignity and respect.

Vanfleteren then goes on to talk more generally about his approach to photography and his decision to stick with black and white. It was a concious decision made some six months after art school and beginning his professional career. He chose the ‘little thing’, the ‘narrow track’ because he just felt good about it. Resisting pressure from the newspapers to deliver colour images cost him some interesting assignments. But the quality of his black and white work meant that he was still always in demand and he kept getting work. Now he has a body of work which bears his style while others adapt, as he says, from month to month to new fashions.

When making portraits Vanfleteren is rather quiet and contemplative. There is no shouting or loud music or rapid changes of pose. He moves slowly round his subject “as in a dance”, occasionally giving instructions on where to look. Even after all these years taking portraits is something very special to him. “It’s an energy that is very strange. Even if you see the people years later there’s a connection. Because some people really let you into their life, their heart or their mind – so it’s something very intense. That’s why I like portrait photography.”

The beautiful thing about photography, Vanfleteren says, is that you can “really go wherever your head is”. If you feel sad and melacholic you can express that: If you feel outgoing, go out, meet people and express that too.

Stephan Vanfleteren sums up his refreshing approach this way: “I don’t want to be a photographer that proves that he can photograph everything. I want to be a happy man. And how you become happy is to photograph the things that you are interested in. ‘Artist’, ‘documentary journalist’ - The words I don’t think about. I just want to make photographs that I like and that other people can understand and feel too.”

Learn more about this outstanding photographer in Part 2.

A High Degree of Humanism

This video is about a quite remarkable woman. Mary Ellen Mark has been a photographer for over forty years and the ‘Bio & Resume’ section on her homepage documents an extraordinary lifetime’s work:

 

120 solo exhibitions, 175 group exhibitions, 58 collections in which she is permanently exhibited, 5 film credits, 59 photographic awards, 229 teaching and lecturing jobs, 132 different magazines have published her photographs, 17 books have been authored by her alone and 177 books have been published with her as coauthor.

Having majored in painting and art history she got a scholarship to study photojournalism at the excellent Annenberg School for Communication in Pennsylvania. Here it was possible to borrow any kind of photographic equipment one might want and to have all the paper you needed to print the results – “a fantastic experience”. Mary still uses various formats, each with it’s own particular feel. And she has stayed true to her photojournalistic roots, photographing people and using film rather than digital.

To those of her students who use digital, she recommends that they tape up the backs of their cameras. It is only possible to judge if an image works, she insists, when it’s printed, not directly on the screen of the camera. Most of what is now produced in computers changes the reality of what you are seeing, she says. It is photo-illustration, not photography.

The business of photography has changed over the years and Mary sees some of changes critically. There is now less interest in long stories and less respect for documentary work, for reality and for great portraiture. Potent, iconic images are what Mary Ellen Mark creates and these images, in her words, “have to be made in the camera”. “You have to find the picture and that’s the way it is.” Your job is to translate what you are looking at into an image.

On the technical side, Mary says that she almost always uses Tri-X. And in shooting situations she says, “you have to take control. The subjects must feel that you know what you’re doing.”

Mary Ellen Mark is as active as ever and describes here some of her current projects and the workshop that she will be running this year for the fifteenth time in Mexico.

Her words of wisdom are based on enormous photographic experience and a lifetime of work with people: “Don’t be pushed into being what you’re not”.

Testshoot with Steve Thornton

In this film, photographer Steve Thornton shows photographers how to properly use strobe lights outside in a completely shaded area, easily and effectively.

I think one of the most exciting forms of photography is fashion photography and one of the easiest disciplines in my opinion is men’s fashion photography. This blog will teach you how to learn the right things to do when you are starting off on your way to becoming a great men’s fashion photographer. I never walk on to a set without having a concrete idea of what I’m looking to achieve. I have books, and books of tear sheets of images of lighting, styling, posing, editing, etc. It’s very easy to become burnt out as a photographer, but if you have these books of inspiring images to glance through, I can guarantee something will catch your eye, and a concept or story will begin to develop.