VANFLETEREN, Stephan - Belgicum

Background information

The photo volume 'Belgicum' by Stephan VANFLETEREN is a photo project about the country Belgium. However, 'Belgicum' is explicitly not an objective representation of a country, but a subjective photographic document in black and white. It is a voyage of discovery into a small country in the heart of Europe, at the turn of the centuries. For more than 15 years, the Belgian photographer walked around the Belgicum territory, guided by emotions and by love for his homeland. He made a journey through a scarred land, in search of the irretrievable identity of a land with the melancholic soul of an ancient nation. Over the past decades, more than 11,000 copies of this international bestseller have been sold. Thus 'Belgicum' became a reference book of Belgian photographic history.

Content, additional information

The large-format photo volume 'Belgicum' by Stephan VANFLETEREN consists of black-and-white photographs, some of which are reproduced on a full page or arranged in pairs or fours on a single page. Thematically the photographs move in the area of portrait, architecture or landscape photography or still life.

The essay included in 'Belgium' is by writer and historian David van Reybrouck, who received awards for the volumes 'Congo' and 'Revolusi' and in 2017 wrote 'Zink', a wonderful portrait of the Dutch-Belgian-German region and the microstate of 'Neutral-Meuresnet'.
This edition of 'Belgicum' offered here is the reprint published by Hannibal on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of this cult book.

In the press

"'Belgicum' is brilliant. It is an epitaph for a country that disappeared before Stephan VANFLETEREN's eyes like a sand castle in the breaking waves." (freely translated, © Eric MIN, in: De Morgen)

About Belgian photographer, Stephan VANFLETEREN (b.1969)

Photo books by Stephan VANFLETEREN