Stephan Vanfleteren - Present - 2019

PRESENT

Stephan Vanfleteren (1969) is best known to the general public for his intense black-and-white portrait photography, but in the past decades his work has expanded into documentary, artistic, and personal photography. From street photography in world cities like New York to the genocide in Rwanda, from shop fronts to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic Wall, from still lifes to intense portraits. The iconic images sit side by side with unknown treasures in this substantial book containing no fewer than 505 photographs.

In the very personal accompanying text, Vanfleteren reflects on the evolution of his own work and the photography genre as a whole over the past decades. You get a detailed view of his intriguing career from the very beginning, when he traveled the world with a hunger for action. He also photographed his homeland: all major news stories of the nineties appeared before his lens. Around the turn of the millennium, Vanfleteren began to focus on what disappears. With meticulous attention to nuance, he created a visual archive of his homeland and his fellow Belgians, in his own inimitable style.

In recent years Vanfleteren has brought the world inward, into his daylight studio, which has led to many encounters and portraits.

This book contains two new series – which have not been published before – that arose in the intimacy of his studio: an exploration of the still life and a study of nude photography, both in color.