Stephan Vanfleteren

For the past twelve years, Stephan Vanfleteren (b. 1969) has been working intense hours in his daylight studio at home. Atelier is a collection of that work. Vanfleteren is searching for beauty and meaning, both in daylight and under artificial light. Grey stage curtains are everywhere as a constantly repeating background. The photographer embraces well-known personalities and anonymous people. He inspects and captures the grooves in the face of an old fisherman and the hand of Nick Cave on the same terms as he does a beachcombed bottle. He focuses an adoring gaze on his own children coming of age as well as on impassioned artists in their old age. He sees the frozen corpse of a kingfisher and the body of a twisting dancer, and watches as the sunlight slowly shifts across his stage curtain. Vanfleteren connects to the traditions of old and contemporary masters but remains faithful to his characteristic style. His craftsmanship and artistic nature make us both witness and party to the splash of incoming light. With a text contribution by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer.

For the first time, the world-renowned photographer Stephan Vanfleteren will share the enchantment that has drawn him to the sea – or more accurately, into the sea – in recent years. Vanfleteren’s fascinating images of the natural world take the viewer on a journey through time. They are inspiring invitations to consider developments in maritime painting in a new light, and to discover how his perspectives intersect with those of painters from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

It was in 1970 that Philippe Herreweghe founded Collegium Vocale Gent, dedicated among other things to works by Johann Sebastian Bach and German Baroque music. The ensemble brought new insights on the performance of Baroque music to bear on vocal music, and attained world fame within just a few short years. In 2022, Philippe Herreweghe marks his 75th birthday with a splendid book in which he looks back at his life and his successful career as a conductor. Photographer Stephan Vanfleteren accompanied the ensemble to the Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi summer festival in Tuscany, and has produced a set of masterful images of the ensemble and its conductor. Religiosity plays a central role in his visual interpretation. With text contributions from Joep Stapel and Luc De Voogdt on the life and work of Philippe Herreweghe and the composers who have been his greatest inspiration, plus a personal contribution by Philippe Herreweghe on Bach and death. Text in English and Dutch.

An ode to Alberic 'Briek' Schotte, the godfather of all flandriens. The heroes of the Tour of Flanders and the Paris-Roubaix are tough and determined. The Flemings specialise in riding on bad roads and in bad weather. This set of photos provides an intimate and emotional portrait of these legendary athletes, landscapes and the Flemish culture. Stephan Vanfleteren has been photographing cycling races in Belgium and its surrounding areas for more than 15 years already. With more than 100 images, carefully selected by photographer Stephan Vanfleteren.

Stephan Vanfleteren (1969) is best known for his probing black and white portraits, but in recent decades he has also produced a wide range of documentary, artistic and personal work. From street photography in global cities like New York to the genocide in Rwanda, from building fronts and shop windows to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic Wall, from still lifes to penetrating portraits. To mark Vanfleteren's 50th birthday, he is celebrating with a major retrospective which will occupy the entire Antwerp Museum of Photography (FOMU, 25 October 2019 - 1 March 2020) and with this publication Present, in which he looks back over his fascinating career. "I was there, I was present", says the photographer, who always feels himself to be both accomplice and witness. For Present, Vanfleteren has taken a generous selection of more than 400 photos from his ample archive, some of which have become iconic images while others have never been published before. In extensive texts, he reflects on how his own work and photography as a genre have evolved over the past decades and links these developments with a number of major social changes. This superbly illustrated book is an impressive overview of Vanfleteren's work and offers a comprehensive picture of him as a photographer, as an artist and, above all, as a human being living life with empathy, wonder and curiosity. Previous successful publications by Vanfleteren, such as Belgicum, Portret, Atlantic Wall and Façades & Vitrines, have become true collector's items.

Belgicum is a photo project about Belgium. It is not an objective representation of a country but rather a subjective photographical document in black and white. It's a journey of exploration into a small country in the heart of Europe, at the turn of the centuries. More than fifteen years Vanfleteren has wandered through and hunted in the 'Belgicum' territories, guided by emotion and by the love for his homeland. He made a journey through a scarred land, in search of the irretrievable identity of a country with the melancholic soul of an old nation. Over the past ten years, over 11,000 copies were sold of this international bestseller. Belgicum grew out to be a reference work in the Belgian history of photography. On the occasion of the tenth birthday of this cult book, it was reprinted. With text by David Van Reybrouck. Text in English, French and Dutch.

With Surf Tribe, photographer Stephan Vanfleteren shows that there is far more to surf culture than just sport and competition. Surfing is also about a deep admiration and respect for the ocean, as well as the feeling of insignificance when confronted with the forces of nature. Surfers use the waves for fun, but also to forget and to battle, both with others and with themselves. Vanfleteren looks beyond the traditional borders of the United States and Australia and searches the globe for people who live in places where sea and land meet. He documents a fluid community, with nature as its sole leader. He has sought out young talent, living icons, and old legends, both competitive and free surfers. The photographs here are serene black and white portraits in Vanfleteren's well-known, haunting style; as always, he reaches below the surface and goes to the core of his subjects. Included, amongst many others, are Kelly Slater, Gerry Lopez, John Florence, Mickey Munoz, Filipe Toledo and Stephanie Gilmore. Surfer, journalist, and actor Gerry Lopez has contributed the Foreword.

During World War II, Adolf Hitler gave the order for a line of defence to be constructed along the coasts of the western front. Ranging from the French-Spanish border to the north of Norway, this Atlantic Wall is a series of bunkers, barricades and coastal batteries. Over the past year, Stephan Vanfleteren has photographed this 'wall' of more than 2600 kilometres in his trademark black-and-white style. He planted his tripod on various beaches in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, climbed cliff faces in France, sailed between the fjords of Norway and stood in the surf in Denmark to photograph the ruins of the largest military structure of the previous century. Vanfleteren shows his wonder for the untamed architectural beauty of these concrete structures, and the power of nature as it slowly reclaims a wall that was once considered impenetrable.

In 1999, photographers Robert Huber and Stephan Vanfleteren travelled through the US in the wake of their hero, Elvis Presley. Elvis (Huber) and Presley (Vanfleteren) invite you to share their journey across the American landscape, from Times Square to Death Valley. Decked out in glittering jumpsuits and big hair, this is the story of two European photojournalists who travelled across eleven states taking pictures of each other, Stephan Vanfleteren using black and white film, Robert Huber, colour. This is the ultimate pop idol on a tour of America, interacting with the people, the places, the history, the cool glances, the warm embraces, the hot coffee and the cheap motels that define modern life. AUTHOR: Robert Huber is a Swiss photographer. He studied at the CEPV (Centre d'Enseignement Professionel de Vevey) in Switzerland (1991-1995). Two years later he moved to New York to work as an editorial photographer. From 2004 until 2006 he lived in Istanbul to pursue his career, and worked for several European and American magazines. He now lives in Zürich and works there as a commercial and editorial photographer and works on his own projects as well. Stephan Vanfleteren specialises in black-and-white portraits and reports extensively at home and abroad. He is currently working mainly for foreign newspapers and magazines. In 1998, Vanfleteren won the European Fuji Awards; in 1996, 1998 and 2000, he won five World Press Photo Awards and several Belgian press awards. He also won the German Henri Nannen Prize in 2011. In 2012, he received the five-yearly Culture Award for the Province of West Flanders and the National Portrait Award in the Netherlands. In 2013, he has won the World Press Photo Award for his series "People of Mercy" in the category "Staged Portraits". SELLING POINTS: . A unique collaboration between two photographers, which resulted in colour (Robert Huber) and black and white (Stephan Vanfleteren) photos inspired by Elvis Presley . Huber and Vanfleteren travelled through the US looking for interesting places to shoot, using themselves as costumed protagonists for their photo series 39 colour, 44 b/w