Overview

An impressive visual testament to a city in transition: harsh for Charleroi, gentle for its inhabitants. In recent years, Stephan Vanfleteren has spent long days traversing the ""Pays Noir."" The photographer maintains a love-hate relationship with this industrial city along the Sambre, where coal mines have long since closed and the declining steel industry is cracking under the pressure of the global crisis. While he is sometimes shocked by poverty, crime, and decay, Vanfleteren is often moved by the solidarity, sincerity, and hospitality of the people of Charleroi. Charleroi, It’s Clear That Grey Is Black is not only a visual testament to a dilapidated city; it is also a personal rendering of impressions, reveries, and thoughts of a man who observes, listens, and writes about the dark spectrum of a grey city.

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Stephan Vanfleteren (°1969) is one of Belgium’s most renowned photographers. Among the general public, he is mainly celebrated for his penetrating black and white portraits of famous and anonymous people. However, his oeuvre is much more diverse than that. Starting his career as a press photographer, Vanfleteren made captivating photo reports about the events that dominated the news. Later on, he began to elaborate a variation of themes in extended photo reportages, going from storefront façades to a journey along the mythical Atlantic Wall. For his most recent work, Vanfleteren withdrew into his studio to focus on his own version of classic themes such as nude portraits and still life photography. Whether it concerns his journalistic, documentary or artistic photographic projects, Vanfleteren always remains true to his characteristic style and aesthetic. His expansive personal stories and reflections of encounters are mesmerising excursions of a photographer who feels as much a witness as an accomplice. A melancholic soul hides in the sensitive photographer. In August 2021 Stephan Vanfleteren received a Doctor Honoris Causa from the VUB - Brussels University, Belgium.

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