Behind the walls, hope - Refugee camp, Idomeni, macedonian border, Greece Silver print on Baryté paper, selenium toning, 82 x 82 cm - March 31, 2016
THOMAS DE WOUTERS
Born in Belgium. 1969.
Lives and works in Brussels.
« One must make haste to photograph man, because he is not immortal. »
“My photography is necessarily an interpretation of reality, subjective, but it captures instants of life without ever trying to distort it by an artcial construction”
Critique of James Estrin, New York Times editor : «Subject matter sets Thomas de Wouters’s images apart, as does his visual approach. His strange, square, black-and-white images look as if they were made by a 1960s-era New York street photographer set loose on the modern-day front between Ukraine and Russia.»
BIOGRAPHY
Thomas de Wouters is a Belgian photographer born in 1969. A former engineer, he is a self taught photographer who began serious taking photographs at over 40. His choice of film photography for his work is not just a technical choice – it is connected to time. With a film that has just 36 views, every picture is precious. Taking time becomes his ally, even in instantaneous moment of photo-journalism or street-photography. His photographic style reflects social research, as much as an artistic choice.
After visiting Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Cuba, he went to fetch his camera from the attic – Maïdan’s revolutionary engagement in February 2014, was the subject of his first real photographic news story to be published later in La Libre Belgique. Three exhibitions of this work will be organized this year in Brussels and Paris. He will be 44.
After a serious brain operation in January 2015, his second report ”Luhansk, the Forgotten” in April was published in the New York Times and in Life Force and was chosen by 6MOIS for “Les dessous de l’image”.
In 2016, he organized a personal exhibition at the Devillez gallery in Brussels. A third news report on Thomas, a migration trilogy conducted between December 2015 and April 2016, was published by the Washington Post and Dysturb. The British magazine Life Force again asked him to be allowed to publish it.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist