the black snapper

I will be presenting you a week of young talented photographers from Belgium. My country produced a significant number internationally acclaimed photographers, all well established artists. But this is the new generation. I am a photography student myself and the photographers presented here are my sources of inspiration. I know some of these Belgian photographers personally. Their visions fascinate me. They are all documentary photographers and each is in the process of developing their own style. To me, documentary reportage is photography at its purest. Observing and capturing meaningfull moments. Bieke Depoorter enrolled in a photography class at the Ghent academy four years ago. She had no experience. She graduated with the beautiful work presented here. I admire her courage to travel Russia all by herself, a young woman approaching total strangers and spending the night at their homes. Not speaking Russian, she established contact by means of a short written note. It might just have been the key to entering these living rooms. It is clear that the families who offered her shelter accepted her completely. Maybe the unability to communicate made it easy for everybody to just be themselves. The photographs were made with a simple camera, most of them in low light conditions. Still, I find them perfectly lit. I prefer the noise in these photographs over the cleanness of more sophisticated camera gear. The noise doesn’t bother me at all. Bieke Depoorter won the 2009 Magnum Expression Award, it is a well deserved recognition of her talent.