Books

ATELIER

For the past twelve years, Stephan Vanfleteren (b. 1969) has been working intense hours in his daylight studio at home. Atelier is a collection of that work. Vanfleteren is searching for beauty and meaning, both in daylight and under artificial light. Grey stage curtains are everywhere as a constantly repeating background. The photographer embraces wellknown personalities and anonymous people. He inspects and captures the grooves in the face of an old fisherman and the hand of Nick Cave on the same terms as he does a beachcombed bottle. He focuses an adoring gaze on his own children coming of age as well as on impassioned artists in their old age. He sees the frozen corpse of a kingfisher and the body of a twisting dancer, and watches as the sunlight slowly shifts across his stage curtain.

Vanfleteren connects to the traditions of old and contemporary masters but remains faithful to his characteristic style. His craftsmanship and artistic nature make us both witness and party to the splash of incoming light.

With text contributions by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

Book available in NL, ENG, FR. Signed or not signed : check webshop www.hannibalbooks.be.

https://hannibalbooks.be/atelier#32804 (NL, not signed)

https://hannibalbooks.be/atelier#32805 (ENG, not signed)

https://hannibalbooks.be/atelier#32806 (Fr, not signed)

https://hannibalbooks.be/atelier#33030 (NL, signed)

https://hannibalbooks.be/atelier#33031 (ENG, signed)

PRESENT

A journey through the oeuvre of photographer Stephan Vanfleteren, with expansive personal reflections and stories from three decades of encounters and photography. From street photography in world cities like New York to the genocide of Ruanda, from storefront façades to the mystical landscapes of the Atlantic wall, from still lifes to intense portraits. The iconic images sit side by side with unknown treasures in this heavy tome containing no less than 505 photographs.

SURF TRIBE

In Surf Tribe, photographer Stephan Vanfleteren shows that there is far more to surf culture than just competitive sport. Vanfleteren looks beyond the traditional surf spots of California and Hawaii and searches the globe for people who live in places where sea and land meet. He documents a fluid community, which has nature as its one and only leader. He pictures talented youngsters as well as living icons and revered legends, competition surfers as well as free surfers. Portraits of Kelly Slater, Gerry Lopez, John John Florence, Laird Hamilton, Bethany Hamilton, Greg Noll, Stephanie Gilmore, Mick Fanning, Joel Parkinson, Mickey Munoz, Filipe Toledo and Tom Carroll.

CHARLEROI, Il est clair que le gris est noir. 

This is not just a visual testament of one city in decline but also the personal precipitation of impressions, musings and thoughts of a man who is watching and listening and writes about the black ghost of a gray city. Text and photos by Stephan Vanfleteren.

BELGICUM

‘Belgicum’ is a photo project about Belgium. This is not an objective reflection of the country, but a subjective photographic documentary in black-and-white. A journey of discovery through a small country at the heart of Europe at the turn of the century. Stephan Vanfleteren wandered, got lost and searched through the ‘Belgicum’ territory for more than fifteen years, driven by emotion and love for his motherland. It was a trip through a country with scars, looking for an elusive identity but with the melancholic soul of an ancient nation.

ATLANTIC WALL

Stephan Vanfleteren photographed this ‘wall’ of more than 2600 kilometres in his well-known black-andwhite style. He planted his tripod on various beaches in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, climbed cliff faces in France, sailed between the fjords of Norway and stood in the surf in Denmark to photograph the ruins of the largest military structure of the previous century. Vanfleteren shows with this series of photos his wonder for the untamed architectural beauty of these concrete structures and he shows the power of nature as it slowly reclaims these structures that were once considered impenetrable.

ELVIS & PRESLEY

The Swiss photographer Robert Huber and Stephan Vanfleteren travelled through the American landscape in 1999, with their journey starting in a hotel room overlooking Times Square and ending in the desert of Death Valley. Dressed in Elvis Costumes, with matching wigs and only guitar case as luggage, they travelled through eleven states to photograph themselves, with one using black-and-white film and the other colour. This became a road trip movie through the mythical American landscape in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac, the radiance of the late Elvis Presley and the surrealism of David Lynch.

FLANDRIEN

The heroes of the Tour of Flanders and the Paris-Roubaix are tough and determined. The Flemings specialise in riding on bad roads and in bad weather. This set of photos provides an intimate and emotional portrait of these legendary athletes, landscapes and the Flemish culture. Stephan Vanfleteren has been photographing cycling races in Belgium and its surrounding areas for more than fifteen years already.

FACADES & VITRINES

Façades & Vitrines is about the beauty of a lowered shutter, a bricked-up door, a peeling mural and a tightly drawn curtain in a window. It is a photographic documentation on the irrevocable loss of the local tradepeople in an ever faster moving world.

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