biography
One must hasten to photograph man, for he is not immortal.
I am a Belgian photographer born in 1969. Former engineer, I am a self taught photographer. I started a new life and photography at over 40... because I wish I had seven lives.
The choice of film photography for my work, more than a technical choice, is connected to my relation to time. With a film limited to 36 views every image is dear. Taking time becomes my ally, even in the instantaneousness of photojournalism or streetphotography.
To bear witness to a life, sometimes hard, sometimes light, without ever losing the accurate framework which will reveal the emotion of an instant without distorting it by an artificial construction. A clear, direct shooting, a natural art and yet a quest for the beautiful beyond the reality sometimes unbearable offered to my camera
My photographic writing is inscribed in a social research as much as an artistic research.
"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."
James Estrin, New York Times