My Visual Anthropological Research [Ongoing]
Paris Cycle [Ongoing]
For three years (2023-25) I stayed every two months for a few days in Paris. The trips quickly evolved in visual anthropological studies of France’s capital in the age of global masstourism, urban transformation, geo-political and economic shifts. The photographs, historical contemplations and brief ethnographic studies of Paris’ s socio-cultural tissue generate a gaze upon the city’s past and future. It serves thus as a metaphore and tool for cultural deconstruction of the Western-European urban universe and a reflection on the ‘condition humaine’ at the dawn of the Anthropocene through visual representations of particular locations within the city. Based on the faultlines between the city and its external counterparts it raises some questions about and possible answers on the contemporary city as a commodified simulacrum that has little to do with the ‘engrained social tissue’ of the classic Parisian urban community.
Piemontese Cycle [Ongoing]
Throughout several shorter and longer stays in the Italian region of Piedmont, I research the contemporary intersections of urban and rural life in this vast and diverse region in Italy’ s North-West. Intergenerational dialogues between the population’s diverse lifeworlds, ranging from the semi-nomadic, rural agricultural and pastoral lifeworld in the Graian Alps (Valle Sacrato, Canavaise, …), the highly post-industrial urban life of its capital Torino (and back), figure as the canvas for a multifaceted, longitudinal visual anthropological research.
The dynamics between city and countryside serve as a canvas for reflecting on the spectre of the post-industrial Global West’ s repercussions on contemporary and future Piemontese society.
Brussels Cycle [Ongoing]
Exploring my hometown Brussels during daytime and after dark produces images of a city that figures both as a diplomatic worldcenter, the cosmopolitan area of the E.U.-Capital but at the same time is an almost provincial outpost build up out of villages and neighbourhoods with a myriad of microcosmosses filled with people triying to build a life from the baseline that ‘in Brussels we’re all somehow immigrants’. In this sense Brussels is always ‘under construction’, which creates a unique dynamic. Cornerd between Belgian political (de-) constructions and globalized European bureaucratic machinery, it’s a fascinating universe that could serve as a metaphor for the (European) city of the future.
Café Rouge [Expected publication Spring 2026!]
Café Rouge is a place-based visual ethnography of the former Brussels bar, Café Au Daringman [‘Chez Martine’], that serves as the subject of a broader reflection on the necessity of ‘Zones of Exception’ and the role of ‘Liminal Space/Place’ in our contemporary society. The interaction between the (interior-) architecture (material culture) of the café and the people appropriating and using this infrastructure (socio-cultural practices) plays a fundamental role in the way its customers experience the city and shape their lives during Meta-Modernity and Super-Diversity. The rationale behind this research dynamic is the cultural deconstruction of the ongoing hyper-commodification of Belgian traditional, folk Café-culture and its repercussions on semi-public community life as well as its function as a metaphore for the human condition within Western-European societies at the dawn of the Anthropocene. Above all it’s a visual tribute to this inspirational place that has brought pleasure to so many people from all corners of the world.
The Birth of Magic: 200th Anniversary of the First Photograph
[Throughout 2026!]
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s photograph of 1826 … will mark in 2026 the second centinary of photography and its legacy. This series wants to celebrate this markingpoint in the crafts history by the contemporary reinterpretation (not necessarily remake and with a wink) of 200 key-photographs that marked a technical and/or aesthetical turningpoint in photography.
About HUMANS 