– Wait, Marge. Maybe if you’re truly cool, you don’t need to be told you’re cool. – Well, sure you do. – How else would you know? The Simpsons (‘Homerpalooza’)
village, to sell its marked-down luxury articles in a pleasant atmosphere. I approached the security staff members of this shopping village as if they were a fictitious community united by a collective investment in the environment, shopping and weekend tourism.
E02 GEERTJE DE WAEGENEER
• geertje.dw@gmail.com
E05 AN-SOFIE KESTELEYN The most important phase in Geertje De Waegeneer’s social documentary photography is the actual shooting. The result is straightforward photography that does not seem to require extensive postproduction, as traditional darkroom techniques are fully employed. Most projects are long-term and evolve around a group of people who are often forgotten by society; slum area labourers, illegal immigrants or Fourth World citizens in our own neighbourhoods, cities or country. This Master’s project focuses on different approaches to illegality. From a distanced view on recent immigrants to a more intimate look at those who have been here a while longer.
• ansofie.kesteleyn@gmail.com • www.ansofiekesteleyn.be
A LAMB NAMED BEAUTY / PEARLSTREET 165 / AMERICAN PORTRAITS A Lamb Named Beauty was started in 2007, when the twins were ten. Now, four years later, a first instalment is shown. Pearlstreet 165 grants the viewer a look inside the Fitzsimmons’s home in Maine, USA. In American Portraits a series of American girls and women are captured on the location of the first encounter; coming out of the supermarket, next to their car or high up in the Rocky Mountains…
E03 TINE DU GARDEIN • tine.dugardein@gmail.com • imaselfishcunt.blogspot.com
‘The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word ‘snapshot’. Ignorance can always be covered by ‘snapshot’. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious.’ — William Eggleston
E04 LAURENT FOBE
• laurent.fobe@gmail.com
• petra.mingneau.0071@ student.hogent.be
Welcome to the edge of things, where sky, sea, land and wandering souls snatch a brief embrace. E07 ANNELIE VANDENDAEL • annelievandendael@hotmail. com • www.annelievandendael.com
MASTER’S PROJECT ‘Si on retouche trop, on gomme la vie. Ce n’est plus de la photo, c’est de la chirurgie esthétique.’ — Peter Lindbergh.
VILLAGE As a visual examination of what ‘community’ means in a society whose structure is based on consumption, I made a series of photographs in the themed shopping centre ‘Maasmechelen Retail Village’. This remote shopping village was designed as an idyllic interpretation of a nineteenth-century miners’
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E09 TIM VAN DEN OUDEN HOVEN • timvandenoudenhoven@gmail. com
DISPARITIONS ‘Quand l’oeil voit noir, l’esprit voit trouble. Dans la nuit il y a de l’anxiété, même pour les plus forts.’ — Victor Hugo Welcome to the concrete abyss. I walk towards it, like blood from a final heartbeat staggering onwards in its ultimate circulation through a labyrinth of veins. I only reach dead ends, infinite walls of compiled cells, meti culously assembled so as to take the horizon away from me. This was constructed, not for my presence, but for my absence. All traces I plan on making are eradicated even before I get a chance to leave any. It is what I am used to… E10 JORIK VAN ESCH
E06 PETRA MINGNEAU
A study of memory, and the struggle to hold on to it.
E08 MARIE VAN DEN DRIESSCHE • marie.vandendriessche@ gmail.com
Never forget again. Try not to lose. Guard from afar. Index fiercely. What deserves to stay?
• jorikvanesch@hotmail.com
50A 161 162 50a 161 162 is the code attributed to the Knokke-Arlon railway line, and all photographs from this eponymous project were taken along this route. The landscapes and buildings are visible from inside the train and are never more than fifty yards away from the tracks. The photographs document the landscape, sketch the portrait of an era and offer a cross section of Belgium. Even though the final work is structural and organized in nature, the actual motivations for engaging in this project were grounded in a love for the country and its diversity. Charles Baudelaire summed it up nicely when he wrote: ‘Le beau est toujours bizarre.’