A Belgian love story: the recovered photo albums of Paul and Sylvie

Photo albums found at a flea market reveal the happy moments of Paul and Sylvie, a Belgian couple about whom little is known. Galerie L'Enfant Sauvage is dedicating an exhibition to them.

On a flea market, Pauline Caplet and Paul de La Marandais stumbled upon a pile of old photo albums. They were filled with images unveiling moments of joy in the life of a Belgian couple about whom very little is known. But it’s precisely this lack of detail that makes them so relatable. His name was Paul. Hers was Sylvie. And they were in love. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, they photographed one another, chronicling their moments of happiness. They enjoyed travelling to nearby countries and cities. We could assume they had no children.

Beyond these moments frozen on film, their lives remain a mystery, making them all the more universal. In these silhouettes, these smiles harvested from the past, we can each see our own parents, our own loved ones.

It was while browsing at a flea market that Pauline Caplet, founder of the L’Enfant Sauvage photographic space, and Paul de La Marandais, an exhibition curator, stumbled upon a pile of old photo albums containing these unexpected treasures. “What drew me in, and what I found so moving,” Caplet explains, “was watching them grow old together, album by album. The images themselves are of a lovely quality too. Some are even hand-tinted.”

Gripped by nostalgia

They often photographed one another from the same angle, in the same setting. “There’s a real sense of freedom and lightheartedness radiating from these photos,” adds De La Marandais. “On a train station platform, with time on their hands, they would snap pictures of each other.” Passionate about archive photography, Pauline decided to give them pride of place in a parallel project, “Le petit bureau des archives”.

“There’s a nostalgia in these photos that really resonates with people. It creates a sense of connection. We need these kinds of stories,” she believes. Who amongst us doesn’t have photo albums tucked away in a cupboard or attic, filled with images of shared, happy moments? Whether it’s 1930 or 2030, the feeling remains the same. Nothing has really changed.

In a life distilled into a few hundred snapshots, there are inevitable gaps. And questions. Often unanswered. “The person who sold us the albums wasn’t a relative,” De La Marandais continues. “They didn’t know them, and we didn’t try to search any deeper.” In the albums, some photographs are captioned, some have a date. Not all. There are also missing pictures – sometimes several from a single page, sometimes just one. “You have to accept that you don’t know everything. That’s part of the beauty of it. We don’t know why that particular photo is missing – perhaps it was deliberately removed, perhaps simply a casualty of time.” There are other voids – the war years, for instance. Nothing appears between 1939 and 1950. No explanation given. Examining the photographs closely, however, allows one to infer certain details. It seems likely that Paul was the main photographer, entrusting the camera to his wife to capture reciprocal portraits. He was a good photographer. He clearly took great care of his images; they are well-composed and perfectly exposed.

Among those who come to see the exhibition, perhaps someone will recognise a face, or one of the locations featured. “This is not a closed project,” Caplet says. “It will probably evolve. I would love to turn it into a book.” Caplet also carries a faint hope of one day unearthing more albums belonging to Paul and Sylvie, filled with other moments. Other mysteries.

The exhibition Paul & Sylvie – A Belgian Love Story (1930s-1960s) wil run from 6/6 to 24/8 at L’Enfant Sauvage, enfantsauvagebxl.com