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Summary:

Summary:

In this last installment about photojournalist Robert Lebeck he will share stories about his work after retiring as a photographer.

During the 1980’s Lebeck’s career was nearing its end, despite that he did work up until he was 66 creating and photographing numerous stories for numerous magazines. 65 was an age when people normally retired.

In the early 80’s Lebeck had his biggest Photo-story for Stern Magazine. It was entitled Germany in March. It was his biggest photo-story because he received 12 double pages published in the magazine. That had been the most that Stern had published of Lebeck’s work at one time. The double spread was shot in Hamburg at the fish market there. Lebeck’s subject was a young man eating used fruits and vegetables on the sidewalk. The image was so stark and had so much to say just by looking at it, Stern made it the double page opener of the story.

Lebeck also talks about his retirement from the photo industry, while still remaining involved in photography, overseeing several exciting book and exhibition projects to coincide with his 70th and 75th birthdays. Even though he was out of the business as a photojournalist he was still creating opportunities for him to show his work.

Summary:

Using four examples from his BELGICUM project, Stephan Vanfleteren talks here about his photographs and why he is a photographer. His work moving, photojournalistic is a clear reflection his own warm and caring personality.

A typical example is the story about René, a poor, lonely man living in Brussels. Vanfleteren and a writer friend of his met René in a bar. They had a few beers together, René buying some of the drinks although he really couldn’t afford it. It turned out too, that René was on medication and shouldn’t have been drinking alcohol at all.  Unable to walk home, René was taken back to his room by the photographer and the writer. They carried him upstairs “like two maffiosi with a corpse”, put him on his bed, took off his shoes, covered him up and left: A poignant episode for Vanfleteren and one that started a whole series of photographs of poor people in Belgium. René became “a kind of a friend” who Vanfleteren visited whenever he was in the neighborhood. “He never knew know how meaningful he was for me”, says Vanfleteren, “You have to be humble and thankful”. René later died. One can feel the emotion in Vanfleteren’s narrative.

Then there’s the serendipitous picture of an old couple, the man taking a snapshot of his wife, whose skirt is blowing up in a parody of the famous Marilyn Monroe image. They are on the parapet of a large church in Brussels, having come there from a little village somewhere to visit Brussels. “There is a lot of love in this picture”, he says. Vanfleteren has captured a magic moment that he couldn’t really believe until he got home and developed the images.

Vanfleteren’s landscapes are misty and mysterious. See the strange image of an old, deserted Mercedes car in a wood, slowly being taken over by Mother Nature. “It was too beautiful to be true,” says Vanfleteren. The windscreen is intact, the papers still in the glove box, the car not vandalized at all. This symbol of movement stands oddly fixed in the landscape.

Finally there are the portraits of fishermen: Memories for Vanfleteren, of his boyhood growing up on the Belgian coast. Over a five-year period he went back again and again to see if these old fishermen were still there. And he found them, listened to their stories of the sea, the heartache of losing friends overboard in storms, and he photographed their deeply lined and weathered faces.

For these portraits he used daylight. Sometimes it was from a window or in a garage. And as always he worked slowly with a large format camera in black and white, sometimes taking an hour for a single picture. He feels uncomfortable with small cameras. “The World is too fast,” says Vanfleteren, “I stand with foot on the brake: That’s maybe the reason I’m a photographer.”

There are more of Stephan Vanfleteren’s pictures on his homepage. The Galerie Hilaneh von Kories in Hamburg, Germany, where his BELGICUM series has been exhibited, also carries a short vita (in German).

Summary:

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.