ATELIER - EN
Stephan Vanfleteren
«Light is the beginning of everything. For more than twelve years I’ve watched this phenomenon enter my studio. It’s a miracle I never tire of.»
- Stephan Vanfleteren
In recent years, Stephan Vanfleteren has been engaged in intense photographical activity in the daylight studio at his home. This work is brought together in Atelier. Grey theater curtains are present throughout as a recurring background. In both his natural light and his artificial light photography, Vanfleteren is on a quest for beauty and meaning. His extensive palette of subjetcs includes both things and people - well-known figures and anonymous individuals alike. He shows us the face of an old fisherman and inspects both Nick Cave’s hand and a bottle washed up on the beach. He adores his growing children and inspired artists. He studies the stiffened corpse of a kingfisher and the body of a flexible dancer, or follows the sunlight as it moves slowly across his theater curtain.
His work alludes to classical painting, with its bewitching ‘old’ light, oblique light and chiaroscuro. if a subject cannot be photographed in Vanfleteren’s home, he raises the grey theater curtains and builds his own studio on location.
Stephan Vanfleteren’s Atelier project follows in the tradition of old and contemporary masters such a Rembrandt, Géricault, Zurbaran, Claesz., Cézanne, Borremans, Penn and Roversi. It is an ode to the power to observe, to imagine, to sublimate and - ultimately - to fix, in which Vanfleteren stays true to his characteristic style and aesthetic. With his craftsmanship, artistry and vitality, he turns us into witnesses and accessories to a crime with incident light.
With text contributions by Ilja Leonard Pfeiffer and Stephan Vanfleteren.
Edition : Hannibal Books
Number of pages : 432
Size : 24,5 x 18,4 cm