yesterday, it was exactly one year since Alexandra Boulat (war photographer and co-founder of the VII Photo Agency) passed away due to a brain aneurysm… i can actually remember hearing that sad news as if it happened yesterday. unbelievable how fast time flies by these last few years! :-/

you can check out some of her work on the following links:

VII: Women In Middle East
Time: Capturing Gaza’s Hell
Alexandra Boulat: A Tribute

anyways… today there’s been a general strike in Belgium, so i thought… why not update my blog with photos of the manifestations i’ve witnessed in the past year. i have to warn you.. it’s a pretty lengthy post, so hang in there ;) i think many of the pictures included are total rubbish, but hey… it’s a blog so i can post more pictures here than i actually like and maybe some of you even like ‘em…

all pictures are taken with my bessa r3m(nokton 40/1.4) or my nikon fm2n(nikkor 50/1.8). film used: tri-x(in xtol 1:1). i had a lab scan my negs so don’t expect great image quality.

the first manifestation took place on september 11th 2007(yeah.. 9/11) in Brussels, where the right-wing Flemish nationalist party “Vlaams Belang” wanted to protest against the “Islamisation of Europe”. the mayor of Brussels had banned the protest, but Vlaams Belang still tried to protest which led to 200 protesters being nearly immediately arrested. unfortunately… due to my train being late, i actually missed all the action so nothing interesting to see there for me…

… also because the place was way too crowded with journalists…

i did see Hugo Coveliers *ugghh* :-/

journalists, journalists and journalists!

the aftermath.

afterwards i got into a discussion with two women. we ended up in a pub and had a very, very, very long discussion about Belgian politics. One of the women had a Belgian nationality but was originally from Congo, so that made the discussion even more interesting. ’twas nice!

about a month later, i went to an anti-fascism demonstration in Brughes.

i’ll translate:

“stop fascistic violence
everything that separates us, weakens us
jobs, no racism”

many young “commies” in Brughes :-D

on the move…

trying to sell left-wing propaganda to people passing by.

Ché

absolutely one of my favourite pictures of this manifestation! she was yelling through that megaphone. i had just setup my camera. she looked back, looked at me for a spare second and *click*. luckily i was fast enough to have the focus (nearly) spot on manually…

i just love all these different expressions on their faces; the guy with the “nie wieder faschismus” sign, the guy looking at the sky, …

CHÉnge the world…

a few weeks later, i was walking through Brussels and (accidentally) ran into a protest against the PKK and against terror and violence in general. in the beginning, i didn’t really felt comfortable. i was quite impressed by those thousands of Turkish people singing and praying… and there i stood “white” guy with my camera’s :’ ) but as i started taking pictures i felt more comfortable and after a while people even started to ask me to have their picture taken(and their typical question afterwards: “for what newspaper are you working? when will this photo be in the newspapers?” :-D many people asked me that. apparently i have the photojournalist looks haha).

gotta love the eye contact!

enjoying the fag

“als ik u pak, eet ik u op!” :’ )

he definitely wanted to be in the “newspapers” :-D

she was quite shy and she was already making her move to run away, so i had to be fast… too bad it’s waaaaay out of focus. in such cases autofocus could be handy. oh well…

he was definitely enjoying himself.

… and some more people who wanted to be in the “newspapers”.

later on, things got out of hand somehow and the police had to intervene. i’m still wondering why i have taken more time to photograph these guys. i have exactly one frame of them :-/

he wasn’t too happy i guess…

next up is a manifestation for the equality of women in Iran/Afghanistan.

these lads asked me to have their picture taken and so i did…

he was quite shy i guess… i tried to photograph him several times and almost every time he was fast enough to hide his face behind that sign.

“look! that guy’s taking pictures. let’s put up our (out of focus) retarded faces”

he didn’t quite understand what was going on…

… and here, one was curious about what was going on and the other was curious about what i was doing :-p

believe it or not… a photo in color! i was testing out some slide film(Kodak Elitechrome) with my Bessa and a gigantic Metz CL-4 flash attached to it. the colors/sharpness aren’t very representable as i scanned the slide with a friend’s crappy scanner.

too bad there’s a guy with a gigantic camera in the background staring at me. i think he didn’t quite get it why i was using a “stupid toy camera” and attached a gigantic flash to it haha :” )

still one manifestation to go: the unity of Belgium. it was a protest against the failure of the Belgian politicians to form a new government. Meanwhile they still haven’t solved all problems. Tsjeven… :-/

don’t know why, but they drew my attention :’ )

even the war veterans were doing their fair share…

…as well as the (out of focus) white hairy unidentified species

some had seen the light apparently…

a Belgium afro wig. too bad this picture isn’t in color

op naar het Jubelpark!

guarding the flag.

one happy camper texting a message to the home front?!

singin’ the Brabançonne (the Belgian national anthem) together.
do notice the woman’s “what the fuck man! i’m eating”-face on the right!

zelfs zwarte piet was van de partij…

still don’t know what these guys were trying to achieve.

…and the summary of it all:
“three languages, one soul, one Belgium”

there… this post has come to an end. i hope you’ve enjoyed it! ;)

cheers,
bert

because i still don’t have a film scanner myself(voel u maar schuldig Caroline! :-p), i can’t really show you new stuff at the moment… so i’m just going to upload some older stuff for now…

starting off with a portrait series i made about people living in Schaarbeek. Schaarbeek is located in Brussels and is home to a large Turkish immigrant community, as well as to other immigrant communities. you can find so many different nationalities over there; Turkish, Moroccan, African, Bulgarian, Armenian,… and you’ll also notice that in these portraits ;-) still… it’s actually quite an interesting place to take pictures!

the first photo is a portrait of Rafi. he’s an Armenian guy and lives in Schaarbeek since 1999. he didn’t speak a word Dutch, French, English or German(that’s about it for my languages.. my Armenian isn’t all that good :-p). luckily, some of his friends accompanied him and they spoke a little bit French, so they translated for me(well they tried.. communication wasn’t all that easy, but we had a good laugh.. that’s for sure! :-D).

in the end, i was allowed to take a few pictures. because i couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand me, i just turned his head the way i wanted, had him put the cigarette in his mouth et voila! :-D i printed the original photo on 30×40 fibre-based paper(warmtone), which looks absolutely stunning!

the next photo is a portrait of a turkish lady. i still don’t know her name because we couldn’t understand each other *yay for language barriers :-/*.

however… she was sitting there on her doorsteps and i just liked the way she was sitting there and enjoying the good weather. so i wanted to ask her if i could take her picture, but she didn’t really understand what i wanted to do. in the end, she gave me permission to take some pictures *yay for body language!*(even though it took me a while to make her my intentions clear :-D).

next up is the portrait of Mpungi(yes that’s really his name! :-)). he’s such a great guy. before i took this picture, i already met him a few times. the first time i met him, i was taking pictures at night in Brussels and he tapped on my shoulder and spoke the magical words: “Jesus loves you!” :’-) i was quite surprised by that one sentence and had a conversation with him about why Jesus loved me. some time later, i saw him again in the Brussels North train station. he saw me, walked up to me and said that same sentence again. apparently he didn’t know me anymore :-p

a few months later, i was making these portraits in Schaarbeek and he just came out of a store. i walked up to him(of course he said that same sentence again.. some kind of trademark i guess!) and i asked if i could have his picture taken. he seemed very honoured that i had asked him.. so i put him against the wall and took some pictures. afterwards, he gave me a hug(no shit!) and meanwhile said: “peace on earth”. oh great moments that were! :-D

the last photo is a portrait of Attila and his son. he’s a truck driver and lives in Schaarbeek since 1970. he was just coming home from work(hence why he’s wearing a jacket in his kitchen :-D) and i ran to his car to ask whether i could take some pictures of him inside of his house. luckily he spoke French(well… not that my French is all that good, but it’s definitely better than Turkish :-p) and wanted to cooperate immediately. he was a very friendly man really.

once inside, his son immediately grabbed a camera out of a cabinet and started to show off his little digital camera. hehe ’twas quite funny :-D on the photo, you can still see a piece of camera in his hand…

too bad this print scan is quite fucked though. the dark areas have become big black stains during the scanning process :-( the print looks way better, believe me! the boy’s face is so dark here…

there… the first blog post on my new blog is a fact! i hoped you enjoyed it(even though most of you have probably seen these photos before…).

cheers!

bert