Photobook Belge

Background information

'Photobook Belge' is the first ever overview of photobooks created by Belgian photographers and a unique overview of 150 years of Belgian photobook history

Since the birth of photography, the photobook has always been an essential medium for photographers wanting to display and distribute their work. But the photobook is more than just a display case: it’s a means of expression, an art object, a historical record, a propaganda tool, a multisensory experience.

Content

Covering a period of more than 150 years, from the mid 19th century to the present, the photo book compendium 'Photobook Belge' - Compiled by Tamara Berghmans (curator FOMU – Fotomuseum Antwerp), with contributions from Pool Andries, Jan Baetens, Sandrine Colard, Emmanuel d’Autreppe, Johan De Vos, Steven F. Joseph, Johan Pas and Stefan Vanthuyne - features almost two hundred and fifty photo volumes, all carefully described and illustrated. It’s the first time that research into the production and context of Belgian photobooks has been carried out on this scale. In so doing, it sheds light on a hitherto neglected part of Belgium’s long and fascinating photo history.
Featuring works by famous names such as Dirk BRAECKMAN, Marcel BROODTHAERS, Bieke DEPOORTER, Gilbert FASTENAEKENS, Edmond FIERLANTS, Geert GOIRIS, Harry GRUYAERT, Max PINCKERS, Marie-Françoise PLISSART, Marc TRIVIER and Stephan VANFLETEREN, as well as many undiscovered gems from Belgium’s rich photography history.

Book review

"Belgium's 'constant identity crisis' as well as its history with the Congo are on show in a new exhibition and publication devoted to the country's photobooks. 'Photobook Belge' provides an overview of the evolution of the Belgian photobook from the mid-19th century to today. Including nearly 250 publications, Photobook Belge is divided into eight chapters, looking at areas such as Artists’ Books, Belgian national identity, and the relationship between text and images. Belgium’s brutal colonisation of the Congo, its subsequent relationship with the country, and its often problematic representation of it in images, is given a whole chapter. 'Many of the photobooks published since the 50th anniversary of [Congo’s] independence in 2010 oscillate between a more or less overt nostalgia, Afro-pessimism and an aesthetic of ruins,' states the curator Tamara Berghmans. 'Most are still the result of a white, male gaze.' 'Photobook Belge' ends up with two sections on recent Belgian photobooks, the first of which is devoted to Belgian photobooks since the turn of the 21st century and includes publications such as Stephan Vanfleteren’s Belgicum and Harry Gruyaert and Hugo Claus’ Made in Belgium; well-respected young photographers Bieke Depoorter and Max Pinckers are also included in the exhibition and book. The last chapter showcases photobooks and dummies from the last five years, as selected by 11 Belgian photography academies from among their student cohort.
As the exhibition text notes, photography and Belgium both started at around the same time, with Belgium declaring its independence from The Netherlands in 1931, just as Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Henry Fox Talbot were making the first photographic images. “Photography and Belgium were born at the same time. In some ways, they even grew up together,” reads the text. 'As the new nation state developed its self-image and cultivated its cultural heritage, this upstart technology and nascent art form was on hand to offer support and reinforce national pride.' Elsewhere, photobooks intersect with Belgium in more critical and more humorous ways. “The Belgian identity, or ‘Belgitude’, is sometimes described as a hollow identity, that is, defined by what it is not,” reads the introduction to the chapter on ‘Belgitude’. “The photobooks on display here are not concerned with harsh political statements, but represent personal views of a paradoxical and sometimes absurd country in the throes of a constant identity crisis.” (© Diane Smyth, in: bjp online, March, 1st 2019)

About photographers in the compendium 'Photobook Belge'

Dirk BRAECKMAN, Marcel BROODTHAERS, Bieke DEPOORTER, Gilbert FASTENAEKENS, Edmond FIERLANTS, Geert GOIRIS, Harry GRUYAERT, Max PINCKERS, Marie-Françoise PLISSART, Marc TRIVIER, Stephan VANFLETEREN

Photo books by photographers in the compendium 'Photobook Belge'

• BRAECKMAN, Dirk
  BROODTHAERS, Marcel
  DEPOORTER, Bieke
  FASTENAEKENS, Gilvert
  FIERLANTS, Edmond
  GOIRIS, Geert
  GRUYAERT, Harry
  PINCKERS, Max
  PLISSART, Marie-Françoise
  TRIVIER, Marc
  VANFLETEREN, Stephan