Stephan Vanfleteren (born 1969) is a Belgian photographer, best known for his portraits in black and white and his depictions of Belgium and abroad.
Biography Stephan Vanfleteren was born in Kortrijk in 1969,"Stephan Vanfleteren", RTBF. Accessed 17 August 2021. and was brought up in Oostduinkerke.David Van Reybrouck, "B", pp 201–206 within Stephan Vanfleteren, Belgicum (Tielt: Lannoo, 2007; ). He studied photography at the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels from 1988 to 1992.
In 1993, while awaiting military service, he made a trip to New York, where he mostly did street photography. He has described New York as his "entrance ticket" to the profession of photography.Joep Eijkens, "Uit het rijke leven en werk van Stephan Vanfleteren", PhotoNmagazine.eu, 26 November 2019. Accessed 15 August 2021.
Career Vanfleteren started out as primarily a photojournalist for the newspaper De Morgen."Stephan Vanfleteren – Nikon Gallery", . Retrieved by the Wayback Machine on 2 November 2019. In this role, he covered, in black and white, stories of the 1990s such as the death of King Baudouin, the protests over the , the Kosovo War, the Rwandan genocide, and the Dutroux affair.Lucy Dricot, "Évadez-vous dans l’impressionnante rétrospective du photographe Stephan Vanfleteren", RTBF, 8 November 2019. Accessed 16 August 2021. He also found time for stories far from the headlines, such as the experience of riding boxcars in the American northwest.Jan Hertoghs, "Hard travellin'", The Independent, 6 June 1997. Accessed 23 August 2021.
He has also contributed to The Guardian,"Stephan Vanfleteren, Foto Festival Naarden. Retrieved by the Wayback Machine on 6 May 2019.Stephan Vanfleteren, "Congo: 50 years, 50 faces", The Guardian, 11 June 2010. Accessed 19 August 2021. Humo,"Foto-expositie van Stephan Vanfleteren over Utrechtsch Studenten Corps", Utrecht University, 20 May 2016. Accessed 17 August 2021. Independent Magazine,In the Margin: Belgian Documentary Photography, p. 98. Knack,"Stephan Vanfleteren: Angels of the sea", Het Scheepvaartmuseum. Accessed 20 August 2021. Le Monde, Paris Match, de Volkskrant, and Die Zeit.
Co-founder of the publishing company Uitgeverij Kannibaal/Hannibal, he is also its artistic director. Since 2010, he has been a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent."Photography", KASK & Conservatorium. Accessed 6 September 2021.
Elvis&Presley In May 1999, Vanfleteren travelled around the USA with his friend the Swiss photographer , in the footsteps of their idol Elvis Presley. They photographed each other, "in identical white jumpsuits, mirror shades and high-rise hair",Alfred Hickling, "Elvis and Presley", The Guardian, 12 December 2001. Accessed 19 August 2021. as "Elvis" (Huber) and "Presley" (Vanfleteren), in humdrum scenes from Times Square to Death Valley. Vanfleteren photographed in black and white, Huber in colour. This led to Vanfleteren's first major bookJohan de Vos, "Vanfleteren en Huber in de VS. Elvis & Presley", De Standaard, 2 December 2000. Accessed 16 August 2021. and an exhibition."Elvis&Presley", Comune di Verona, 2001. Accessed 19 August 2021. Both photographers, said a reviewer of the exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery, showed themselves to "have a fine eye for ironic composition".
From reportage to portraiture Vanfleteren's portraits have been his best-known and most recognizable work. Always in black and white, he has photographed many people from the art world but also many who are unknown. A review in Het Nieuwsblad of an exhibition of his portraits commented that Vanfleteren's proximity to the faces and the detail of the photographs together almost create "death masks of the living".Dominique Dierick, "Fotograaf Stephan Vanfleteren exposeert in Wintercircus", Het Nieuwsblad, 7 September 2009. Accessed 10 September 2021.dodenmaskers van levenden
As an international project, Vanfleteren has given faces to numerous people living in poverty and isolation in Antwerp and Brussels. "While I focused on their eyes, I listened to their experiences." In 2009 these portraits, along with others, became the subject of an exhibition at Le Botanique, a cultural centre in Brussels.Jacques Duchateau, "Stephan Vanfleteren: Belgicum", L'Avenir, 14 June 2009. Accessed 17 August 2021. Most were taken with one of Vanfleteren's four Rolleiflexes, as their waist-level finders allowed him to get close.
In the same year, at , Ghent, Vanfleteren exhibited Portret 1989–2009, around two hundred portraits in black and white of people who had had some media presence during the previous two decades. The exhibition then went on tour.
In 2018, he published Surf Tribe, for which he had made a months-long journey around the world, making portraits of surfers. He went to the most celebrated beaches for surfing, but also little-known places in order to portray the most famous surfers, champions as well as unknown amateurs. He did not photograph them in motion but instead captured their static portraits on the beach.
Belgicum From September 2007 to February 2008, the exhibition Belgicum was held at Fotomuseum Antwerp (FoMu). A review in La Libre described this:
Dilapidated buildings, outdated town fairs, unfashionable bars [. . .]. Series of portraits – one could call them mugs – of persons bearing the scars of their hard lives, landscapes engulfed in mist, a document of the repetitive days of an internee at the Guislain Institute in Ghent and finally an un-embellished portrayal of Theofiel, an old farmer broken down amid a pile of objects. This is all "Belgicum"; and obviously, as the [book of the same title] also shows, this tragic Belgium of the little people between canals and side-roads is in fact that of a true Simenon of photography.Jean-Marc Bodson, "Style belge", La Libre, 7 November 2007. Accessed 10 September 2021.Bâtisses délabrées, kermesses ringardes, bistrots borgnes, des ambiances qui se prolongent dans sept suites d'images installées en grand tout autour du reste de la salle. Séries de portraits – de gueules plus exactement – d'écorchés de la vie dure, paysages tous noyés dans la brume, constat des journées répétitives d'un interné de l'institut Guislain à Gand et enfin description au couteau de Theofiel, un vieux fermier cassé au milieu de son capharnaüm. C'est tout cela "Belgicum" et de toute évidence, comme le laisse voir également le très bel album éponyme, cette Belgique tragique des petites gens entre canal et trajectoires obliques est en fait celle d'un véritable Simenon de la photo.
Charleroi Vanfleteren was the fifth (after Bernard Plossu, Dave Anderson, Jens Olof Lasthein and Claire Chevrier) in a series of photographers to be provided with a residency at the in Charleroi.Paulette Nandrin, "Charleroi, son amour", Moustique, 24 June 2015. Accessed 10 September 2021.Joep Eijkens, "Charleroi gezien door Stephan Vanfleteren, de winterreis van een betrokken fotograaf", PhotoNmagazine.eu, 2015. Accessed 15 September 2021. He produced a series of photographs, including many portraits, taken in that city, which had been greatly affected by deindustrialization. These were exhibited in the museum in 2015. The exhibition was described on RTBF as "a tender look at a harsh reality", and as having links to the work of August Sander and Walker Evans yet being the product of a singular vision.Pascal Goffaux, "Stephan Vanfleteren – Charleroi sera blanc un jour", RTBF, 23 July 2015. Accessed 10 September 2021.Il livre un reportage à fleur de peau et pose un regard tendre sur une réalité âpre. [. . .] Le reportage humaniste de Stephan Vanfleteren a la force du style documentaire qui le relie à des auteurs tels August Sander et Walker Evans, mais le regard du photographe est singulier. A review in Moustique said:
Alone, free as a dog, sidling between fog and neon lights, in streets where memories of once flourishing industry disintegrate, or contemplating from the top of a slag heap a landscape where factories once spewed smoke, it is above all the decay of the world that he encounters.Seul, libre comme un chien, se faufilant entre brouillard et néons, dans des rues où s’écroulent les souvenirs d’une industrie autrefois florissante, ou contemplant du haut d’un terril un paysage où les usines vomissaient autrefois des nuages de fumée, c’est surtout toute la décrépitude du monde qu’il croise.
Façades & Vitrines With rare exceptions, Vanfleteren has only photographed in black and white. However, in 2013 he published a series of colour photographs, taken several years earlier, of old wall advertisements, facades destined for demolition or abandoned shop windows; these appeared in a lavishly produced book, Façades & Vitrines."Façades & Vitrines", Galerie Hilaneh von Kories, 2014. Retrieved by the Wayback Machine on 3 December 2016.
Stil leven In 2016, Vanfleteren made a series of photographs for an exhibition, Stil leven, at the (MOA), in Bunnik. Rejecting the museum's initial request for photographs of the Atlantic Wall, he let himself be influenced by the environment of the museum and the surrounding park to realize a series of nudes, still lifes with dead animals, in both black and white and colour. His photos form a dialogue with the work of the painter Armando, the building, and the surrounding nature.Jeroen Wielaert, "Stil leven: sterke ontmoeting tussen Armando en Vanfleteren", NOS, 19 March 2016. Accessed 17 August 2021.
Present In 2020, Fotomuseum Antwerp organized a major retrospective, Present, which followed Vanfleteren's thirty years of photography, with personal reflections: from street photography in cities such as New York to the Rwandan genocide, from store facades to the "darkly beautiful"Jakob Schiller, "The eerie, crumbling bunkers of the Nazis' Atlantic Wall", Wired, 22 May 2014. Accessed 5 September 2021. remains of the Atlantic Wall, from still lifes to portraits."KPMG en Stephan Vanfleteren", KPMG, 24 October 2019. Accessed 16 August 2021.
Awards World Press Photo awards 1996 Photo Contest: Sports, Stories, 3rd prize"1996 Photo Contest, Sports, Stories, 3rd prize: Photographer Stephan Vanfleteren", World Press Photo. Accessed 19 August 2021. 1997 Photo Contest: Daily Life, Stories, 1st prize"1997 Photo Contest, Daily Life, Stories, 1st prize: Photographer Stephan Vanfleteren", World Press Photo. Accessed 19 August 2021. 1997 Photo Contest: People in the News, Stories, 2nd prize"1997 Photo Contest, People in the News, Stories, 2nd prize: Photographer Stephan Vanfleteren", World Press Photo. Accessed 19 August 2021. 2001 Photo Contest: Children's Award, Singles, Individual awards"2001 Photo Contest, Children's Award, Singles, Individual awards Photographer Stephan Vanfleteren", World Press Photo. Accessed 19 August 2021. 2001 Photo Contest: Arts and Entertainment, Stories, 3rd prize"2001 Photo Contest, Arts and Entertainment, Stories, 3rd prize: Photographer Robert Huber & Stephan Vanfleteren", World Press Photo. Accessed 19 August 2021. 2013 Photo Contest: Staged Portraits, Stories, 1st prize"2013 Photo Contest, Staged Portraits, Stories, 1st prize: People of Mercy: Photographer Stephan Vanfleteren", World Press Photo. Accessed 19 August 2021."Stephan Vanfleteren", Mercy Ships, 20 September 2017. Accessed 17 August 2021 European Fuji Award, 1998 2009"Laureaten Louis Paul Boon-prijs", Honest Arts Movement. Accessed 17 August 2021. 2011"Henri Nannen-Preis für Stefan Vanfleteren", VRT, 10 May 2011. Accessed 17 August 2021."'Beste reportage' bij Henri Nannen Preis voor Stephan Vanfleteren", Photoq.nl, 10 May 2011. Accessed 17 August 2021.