the first time i encountered work by Stephan Vanfleteren wat at the UNSEEN fair some 4 years ago. He was presented with large Bunker photographs at a gallery of which i do not remember the name, but the composition and sheer size made them impressive. Since i encountered his name many time in the extra magazines and papers the Volkskrant daily included with their newspaper and i learned to recognize his photographs. They have a quality of their own and one aspect i encounter in many of them is solitude.
Stephan Vanfleteren studied photography at Sint-Lukas Brussels (1988-1992). He worked as a freelance photographer for the newspaper De Morgen from 1993 to 2009, but continued to be involved in his own projects. He specialises in black-and-white portraits and extensive reports at home and abroad. He is currently mainly working for foreign newspapers and magazines. Stephan Vanfleteren is a co-founder of Kannibaal/Hannibal Publishing and is the company’s Art Director. He has also been a guest lecturer at KASK (Royal Academy of Fine Arts) in Gent since 2010. http://www.ftn-books.com has now some of the rarest of Vanfleteren publications available.
AWARDS
In 1998, Stephan Vanfleteren won the European Fuji Awards; in 1996, 1998 and 2000, he won five World Press Photo Awards and several Belgian press awards. He also won the German Henri Nannen Prize in 2011. In 2012, he received the five-yearly Culture Award for the Province of West Flanders and the National Portrait Award in the Netherlands. This year, he has won the World Press Photo Award for his series ‘People of Mercy’ in the category ‘Staged Portraits’.
EXHIBITIONS
Antwerp (FoMu & Fifty One Fine Art Photography Gallery), Brussels (Bozar), Ghent (Winter Circus Museum and Dr. Guislain Museum), Charleroi (Musée de la Photographie), Paris (Sorbonne), London (Host Gallery and The Brickhouse), Liverpool (Open Eye Gallery), New York (UN Headquarters), Cairo (Hanagar Arts Centre), Rome (Gallery Gate), Strasbourg (Salle de la Bourse ), Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), Leeuwarden (Frisian Museum), Maastricht (Centre Ceramique), Osaka (Flanders Centre), Kortrijk (Buda factory), Geneva, Dhaka, Zurich, Milan, Verona, Hamburg and Berlin, Perpignan, Breda , Sète, Arles and Barcelona.
