Summer Exhibitions: Stephan Vanfleteren

The Belgian photographer Stephan Vanfleteren has built up quite a reputation over the last few decades with his press, reportage, and portrait photography in rich black and white. So it was only right and proper that he should be invited to be “court photographer” to the Red Devils. In his book of photographs and in the exhibition entitled “MMXIV” (the Roman figures for 2014), Vanfleteren portrays the stars of our national football team as the modern gladiators he believes them to be. He takes the football icons out of their usual biotope and focuses on their true faces and their half-naked sportsmen’s bodies. His series becomes a study of the human body, but also of the vanity, vulnerability, and (well-paid) servitude of the sporting hero claimed by the media and the masses – and maybe even of today’s ultra-diverse Belgium. Work out the span of Thibaut Courtois’s arms, ponder the colossal scale of Lukaku, and compare the tall Daniel Van Buyten with the small Dries Mertens, the “white” Kevin De Bruyne with the black Christian Benteke, and Witsel’s big hair with Fellaini’s even bigger hair.

(Photo © Stephan Vanfleteren)


• STEPHAN VANFLETEREN: MMXIV: LES DIABLES/DE DUIVELS > 17/8, Botanique, www.botanique.be