How to be a photographer in 4 lessons – second edition

Thomas Vanden Driessche

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In early 2012, an old analog photobooth was installed in Brussels, in a cultural center located near the home of Thomas Vanden Driessche, documentary photographer and member of the group Out Of Focus.

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Following in the footsteps of artists like Topor, he decided to use this medium and its constraints to tell stories about the little world of photography he knows so well, through these strips of 4 pictures.

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These “lessons” were basically distributed weekly through the Internet, but soon began to form of a real little guide to Contemporary Photography (How to be a contemporary, kitsch, conceptual, war, school of Helskinki photographer, etc.).

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Armed with his Valentine typewriter, Thomas gives his lessons with a very personal humor and a gentle irony, highlighting stereotypes and excesses of some contemporary photographic trends. The author, personally embracing many influences from the mainstream of documentary photography in his own work is not sparing himself and also questions, in a way, his own approach.

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The «How to be» were presented or exposed:
At the Festival Images Singulières / Sète, at the Botanique / Brussels, at the Festival of Vevay, at Les nuits photographiques / Paris, at Beaubourg Museum in the framework of the exhibition “What is photography”, at the Lotz Festival / Poland, at the Hamburg Triennale / Germany, and in September in New York.

Thomas Vanden Driessche was born in Leuven in 1979 and works in Brussels. Freelance photographer, member of the group Out of Focus, he worked with Belgian and international magazines and newspapers (Le Monde, Monocle, Das Magazin, The Guardian, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Vif, L’Express, etc.). His work has been exhibited in recent years at the Images Singulières Festival in Sète, the Boutographies in Montpellier, the Transphotographiques in Lille, and the FOTO 8 Summer Show in London.