Thomas de Wouters
Freelance photographer
Frontline Freelance Register
Brussels, Belgium
Thomas de Wouters is a Belgian photographer born in 1969. Former engineer, he is a self taught photographer. He started photography at over 40. The choice of film photography for his work, more than a technical choice, is connected to its relation to time. With a film limited to 36 views, taking time becomes his ally, even in the instantaneousness of photojournalism or streetphotography. His photographic writing is inscribed in a social, as much as artistic, research.
After stays in Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco, Cuba, it is Maïdan’s revolutionary engagement, in February 2014, which leads him to his first real reportage which will be published later on in La Libre Belgique. Three exhibitions of this work will be organized this same year in Brussels and Paris. He is 44 by then.
After a serious brain operation in January 2015, his second report ''Luhansk, the Forgotten'' in April is published in the New York Times and Life Force and chosen by 6MOIS for “Les dessous de l’image”. One of the photos is also displayed within the framework of the collective exhibition organized by the Fournier-Majoie Foundation at the Bozar in Brussels in October, together with Magnum photographers Max Pinckers and John Vinck.
In 2016 a personal exhibition is organized by the Devillez gallery in Brussels, while the third report of Thomas, a trilogy on migration conducted between December 2015 and April 2016, is published by the Washington Post and selected by Dysturb. The British magazine Life Force asks him again to publish. A new photography festival opens in Brussels: Thomas is selected to take part at the inaugural festival organized by Hangar H18 alongside works of Sebastião Salgado and Patrick Zachman.
Thomas comes back from the DRC where he started a new work called “Inside Lucha”.
February 2017
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