Stephan Vanfleteren – författare

An ode to Alberic 'Briek' Schotte, the godfather of all flandriens.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 15 years already.With more than 100 images, carefully selected by photographer Stephan Vanfleteren.

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 well-known 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 a text contribution by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer.

In 1999, photographers Robert Huber and Stephan Vanfleteren travelled through the US in the wake of their hero, Elvis Presley. Elvis (Huber) and Presley (Vanfleteren) invite you to share their journey across the American landscape, from Times Square to Death Valley. Decked out in glittering jumpsuits, sunglasses, and big hair, this is the story of two European photojournalists who travelled across eleven states taking pictures of each other, Stephan Vanfleteren using black and white film, Robert Huber, colour. This is the ultimate pop idol on a tour of America, interacting with the people, the places, the history, the cool glances, the warm embraces, the hot coffee and the cheap motels that define modern life.

Belgicum is a photo project about Belgium. It is not an objective representation of a country but rather a subjective photographical document in black and white. It's a journey of exploration into a small country in the heart of Europe, at the turn of the centuries.More than fifteen years Vanfleteren has wandered through and hunted in the 'Belgicum' territories, guided by emotion and by the love for his homeland. He made a journey through a scarred land, in search of the irretrievable identity of a country with the melancholic soul of an old nation.Over the past ten years, over 11,000 copies were sold of this international bestseller. Belgicum grew out to be a reference work in the Belgian history of photography. On the occasion of the tenth birthday of this cult book, it was reprinted.With text by David Van Reybrouck.Text in English, French and Dutch.

During World War II, Adolf Hitler gave the order for a line of defense to be constructed along the coasts of the western front. Ranging from the French-Spanish border to the north of Norway, this Atlantic Wall is a series of bunkers, barricades and coastal batteries. Over the past year Stephan Vanfleteren photographed this 'wall' of more than 2600 kilometres in his well-known black-and-white 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.

In Surf Tribe, photographer Stephan Vanfleteren shows that there is far more to surf culture than just competitive sport. Surfing is also about a deep respect for the ocean, as well as that moment of insignificance surfers feel when confronted with the forces of nature. It’s about battles won and lost, both with other surfers and with themselves. 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. In this book there are no action shots on azure blue waves; instead, you’ll find serene black and white portraits in Vanfleteren’s well-known, haunting style. He reveals the real person behind the surfer, in all his or her strength and vulnerability. This series of images penetrates to the true heart of surf culture: the love for the water, the addiction to the waves, the passion for the surf. With more than 300 portraits of, among others, 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. With a preface by surf legend Gerry Lopez.

'The sea never makes a fuss. You don’t have to explain yourself or be polite. What does she care what you think of her or what you make of her. When you come or where you enter her. I capture, interpret, sublimate, abstract. I show everything, I show nothing.'— Stephan VanfleterenIn Transcripts of a Sea, the internationally renowned photographer Stephan Vanfleteren (b. 1969) shares the enchantment that has driven him to the sea over the past five years. He analyses the sea, in all her various shapes and ever-changing light, with an obsession bordering on the dangerous, and with a fluid longing. Stormy, mirror-like, misty, thunderous, the surface deceptively calm or like a wildly-thumping washing-machine drum: the photographer does not observe it from the beach or from a boat but opts for a wet confrontation by literally immersing himself in the sea.136 extraordinary images with texts by Stephan Vanfleteren, Johan De Smet and Manfred Sellink.