Schaarbeek, 2008


info about this picture

portrait of Mpungi(yes that's his name ). he's 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 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 that. some time later, i met him again in the train station in Brussels North and he said that same sentence again. apparently he didn't know me anymore

so, a while after that, i was looking for portraits in Schaarbeek and he just came out of a store. i walked towards him(of course he said that same sentence again.. some kind of trademark i guess) and i asked if i could take his picture. 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!


background info about the Schaarbeek.DOC series

i made this picture for a school assignment. we had to make a portrait series about people living in Schaarbeek. Schaarbeek was divided into zones and everybody got a zone in which he had to make portraits. Lucky as i always am *cough*, i got the zone with the red light district and Turkey(as i often call it.. it feels as if you walk somewhere on the streets in Turkey; so many typical turkish stores, turkish people and every nationality other than belgian. i swear.. you'll have a hard time to find someone with the belgian nationality over there. not that i really care about that, but it's just so much harder to convince them to have their picture taken. they either don't trust you or they only speak turkish, bulgarian, armenian,...). it wasn't easy to find four people, but i succeeded in the end

all of my pictures even got selected for the Schaarbeek.DOC exposition.
some images: (not mine!)

[link] [link] [link]


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bessa-r3m, nokton 40/1.4, tri-x, print scan(w/ nikon d300)